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THE SPIRIT of 
THE GHETTO 



STUDIES OF THE JEWISH 
(QUARTER IN NEW YORK 



By 

HUTCH INS HAPGOOD 

With Dr/iwiftgs from Life by 
JACOB EPSTEIN 







NEW YORK AND LONDON 
FUNK k WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO 



Copyright, igo2 

by 

Funk & Wagnalls 

Company 

Printed in the 
United States of America 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

NOV !>; J 902 

flfOPVPIOHT EMTWV 
CLASsCl OCXr No 

Cory B. 



Published 
November, 1902 



NOTE 

A number of these chapters have appeared as 
separate articles in " The Atlantic Monthly," 
" The Critic," " The Bookman," " The World's 
Work'^I'dthe* Boston Transcript," and "The 
.fjvenijig rFjDsC" and "The Commercial Ad- 
vertiser " of New York. To the editors of 
•fhe^e^ putnic^a'tjons thanks for permission to 
itepyBlish aj& gratefully tendered by 

The Author. 



PREFACE 

T^HE Jewish quarter of New York is generally 
^ supposed to be a place of poverty, dirt, igno- 
rance and immorality — the seat of the sweat- 
shop, the tenement house, where "red-lights" 
sparkle at night, where the people are queer 
and repulsive. Well-to-do persons visit the 
"Ghetto" merely from motives of curiosity or 
philanthropy; writers treat of it "sociologically," 
as of a place in crying need of improvement. 

That the Ghetto has an unpleasant aspect is 
as true as it is trite. But the unpleasant aspect 
is not the subject of the following sketches. I 
was led to spend much time in certain poor re- 
sorts of Yiddish New York not through motives 
either philanthropic or sociological, but simply 
by virtue of the charm I felt in men and things 
there. East Canal Street and the Bowery have 
interested me more than Broadway and Fifth 
Avenue. Why, the reader may learn from the 
present volume — which is an attempt made by a 
"Gentile" to report sympathetically on the 
character, lives and pursuits of certain east-side 
Jews with whom he has been in relations of 
considerable intimacy. 

The Author. 

5 



CONTENTS 



Chapter I Page 

The Old and the New 9 

The Old Man 
The Boy 

The " Intellectuals " 

Chapter II 
Prophets without Honor 44 

Submerged Scholars : A Man of God — A Bitter 
Prophet — A Calm Student 

The Poor Rabbis : Their Grievances — The " Genu- 
ine " Article — A Down-Town Specimen — The Neg- 
lected Type 

Chapter III 
The Old and New Woman 71 

The Orthodox Jewess : Devotion and Customs 
The Modern Type : Passionate Socialists — Con- 
firmed Blue-Stockings 
Place of Woman in Ghetto Literature 

Chapter IV 
Four Poets 90 

A 'Wedding Bard 

A Champion of Race 

A Singer of Labor 

A Dreamer of Brotherhood 

Chapter V 
The Stage . 113 

Theatres, Actors, and Audience 
Realism, the Spirit of the Ghetto Theatre 
The History of the Yiddish Stage 

7 



CONTENTS 

Chapter VI Pa?e 

The Newspapers 177 

The Conservative Journals 
The Socialist Papers 
The Anarchist Papers 
Some Picturesque Contributors 

Chapter VII 
The Sketch-Writers 199 

Some Realists 

A Cultivated Literary Man 

American Life Through Russian Eyes 

A Satirist of Tenement Society 

Chapter VIII 
A NoveHst 230 

Chapter IX 
The Young Art and its Exponents . . . 254 

Chapter X 
Odd Characters 272 

An Out-of-date Story- Writer 

A Cynical Inventor 

An Impassioned Critic 

The Poet of Zionism 

An Intellectual Debauchee 



Chapter One 



Cije (BVb ant t|)e J^eto 



THE OLD MAN 

O part of New York 
has a more intense 
and varied life than 
the colony of Russian 
and Galician Jews 
who live on the east 
side and who form the 
largest Jewish city in 
the world. The old 
and the new come 
here into close contact and throw 
each other into high relief. The tra- 
ditions and customs of the orthodox 
Jew are maintained almost in their 
purity, and opposed to these are 
forms and ideas of modern life of 
the most extreme kind. The Jews 
are at once tenacious of their character and 
susceptible to their Gentile environment, when 

9 




that environment is of a high order of civil- 
ization. Accordingly, in enlightened America 
they undergo rapid transformation tho retaining 
much that is distinctive ; while in Russia, sur- 
rounded by an ignorant peasantry, they remain 
by themselves, do not so commonly learn the 
Gentile language, and prefer their own forms of 
culture. There their life centres about religion. 
Prayer and the study of "the Law" constitute 
practically the whole life of the religious Jew. 

When the Jew comes to America he remains, 
if he is old, essentially the same as he was in 
Russia. His deeply rooted habits and the 
"worry of daily bread" make him but little sen- 
sitive to the conditions of his new home. His 
imagination lives in the old country and he gets 
his consolation in the old religion. He picks up 
only about a hundred English words and phrases, 
which he pronounces in his own way. Some of 
his most common acquisitions are " vinda " (win- 
dow), "zieling" (ceiling), "never mind," " alle 
right," "that'll do," " politzman " (policeman) ; 
"em schon kind, ein reg'lar pitze ! " (a pretty child, 
a regular picture). Of this modest vocabulary 
he is very proud, for it takes him out of the cate- 
gory of the "greenhorn," a term of contempt to 
which the satirical Jew is very sensitive. The 
man who has been only three weeks in this 



country hates few thing's so much as to be called 
a "greenhorn." Under this fear he learns the 
small vocabulary to which in many years he adds 
very little. His dress receives rather greater 
modification than his language. In the old 
country he never appeared in a short coat; that 
would be enough to stamp him as a "free- 
thinker." But when he comes to New York and 
his coat is worn out he is unable to find any 
garment long enough. The best he can do is to 
buy a "cut-away" or a "Prince Albert," which 
he often calls a "Prince Isaac." As soon as he 
imbibes the fear of being called a "greenhorn" 
he assumes the "Prince Isaac" with less regret. 
Many of the old women, without diminution of 
piety, discard their wigs, which are strictly re- 
quired by the orthodox in Russia, and go even 
to the synagogue with nothing on their heads 
but their natural locks. 

The old Jew on arriving in New York usually 
becomes a sweat-shop tailor or push-cart ped- 
dler. There are few more pathetic sights than 
an old man with a long beard, a little black cap 
on his head and a venerable face — a man who 
had been perhaps a Hebraic or Talmudic scholar 
in the old country, carrying or pressing piles of 
coats in the melancholy sweat-shop ; or standing 
for sixteen hours a day by his push-cart in one 



of the dozen crowded streets of the Ghetto, 
where the great markets are, selling among 
many other things apples, garden stuff, fish and 
second-hand shirts. 

This man also becomes a member of one of 
the many hundred lodges which exist on the east 
side. These societies curiously express at once 
the old Jewish customs and the conditions of 
the new world. They are mutual insurance 
companies formed to support sick members. 
When a brother is ill the President appoints a 

committee to visit 
him. Mutual insur- 
ance societies and 
committees are 
American enough, 
and visiting the sick 
is prescribed by the 
Talmud, This is a 
striking instance of 
the adaptation of the 
"old" to the "new." 
The committee not 
only condoles with 
the decrepit member, 
but gives him a sum of money. 

Another way in which the life 
of the old Jew is affected by his 

12 




New York environment, perhaps the most im- 
portant way as far as intellectual and educative 
influences are concerned, is through the Yid- 
dish newspapers, which exist nowhere except 
in this country. They keep him in touch with 
the world's happenings in a way quite impos- 
sible in Europe. At the Yiddish theatres, too, 
he sees American customs portrayed, although 
grotesquely, and the old orthodox things often 
satirized to a degree; the "greenhorn" laughed 
to scorn and the rabbi held up to derision. 

Nevertheless these influences leave the man 
pretty much as he was when he landed here. He 
remains the patriarchal Jew devoted to the law 
and to prayer. He never does anything that is not 
prescribed, and worships most of the time that 
he is not at work. He has only one point of view, 
that of the Talmud; and his aesthetic as well as 
his religious criteria are determined by it. " This 
is a beautiful letter you have written me " ; wrote 
an old man to his son, "it smells of Isaiah." He 
makes of his house a synagogue, and prays three 
times a day ; when he prays his head is covered, 
he wears the black and white praying-shawl, and 
the cubes of the phylactery are attached to his 
forehead and left arm. To the cubes are fastened 
two straps of goat-skin, black and white ; those 
on the forehead hang down, and those attached 

13 



to the other cube are wound seven times about , 
the left arm. Inside each cube is a white parch- 
ment on which is written the Hebrew word for 
God, which must never be spoken by a Jew. 
The strength of this prohibition is so great that 
even the Jews who have lost their faith are un- 
willing to pronounce the word. 

Besides the home prayers there are daily visits 
to the synagogue, fasts and holidays to observe. 
When there is a death in the family he does not 
go to the synagogue, but prays at home. The 
ten men necessary for the funeral ceremony, who 
are partly supplied by the Bereavement Commit- 
tee of the Lodge, sit seven days in their stocking- 
feet on foot-stools and read Job all the time. On 
the Day of Atonement the old Jew stands much 
of the day in the synagogue, wrapped in a white 
gown, and seems to be one of a meeting of the 
dead. The Day of Rejoicing of the Law and the 
Day of Purim are the only two days in the year 
when an orthodox Jew may be intoxicated. It 
is virtuous on these days to drink too much, but 
the sobriety of the Jew is so great that he some- 
times cheats his friends and himself by shamming 
drunkenness. On the first and second evenings 
of the Passover the father dresses in a big white 
robe, the family gather about him, and the 
youngest male child asks the father the reason 

14 





why the day is cele- 
brated ; whereupon the 
old man relates the 
whole history, and they 
all talk it over and eat, 
and drink wine, but in 
no vessel which has 
been used before dur- 
ing the year, for every- 
thing must be fresh and 
clean on this day. The 
night before the Pas- 
sover the remaining 
leavened bread is gath- 
ered together, just enough for breakfast, for only 
unleavened bread can be eaten during the next 
eight days. The head of the family goes around 
with a candle, gathers up the crumbs with a quill 
or a spoon and burns them. A custom which has 

IS 



almost died out in New York is for the congre- 
gation to go out of the synagogue on the night 
of the full moon, and chant a prayer in the 
moonlight.} 

In addition to daily religious observances in 
his home and in the synagogues, to fasts and 
holidays, the orthodox Jew must give much 
thought to his diet. One great law is the line 
drawn between milk things and meat things. 
The Bible forbids boiling a kid in the milk of its 
mother. Consequently the hair-splitting Talmud 
prescribes the most far-fetched discrimination. 
For instance, a plate in which meat is cooked is 
called a meat vessel, the knife with which it is 
cut is called a meat knife, the spoon with which 
one eats the soup that was cooked in a meat pot, 
though there is no meat in the soup, is a meat 
spoon, and to use that spoon for a milk thing is 
prohibited. All these regulations, of course, seem 
privileges to the orthodox Jew. The sweat- 
shops are full of religious fanatics, who, in addi- 
tion to their ceremonies at home, form Talmudic 
clubs and gather in tenement -house rooms, 
which they convert into synagogues. 

In several of the cafes of the quarter these old 
fellows gather. With their long beards, long 
black coats, and serious demeanor, they sit about 
little tables and drink honey-cider, eat lima 

16 



beans and jealously exclude from their society 
the socialists and freethinkers of the colony who, 
not unwillingly, have cafes of their own. They 
all look poor, and many of them are, in fact, ped- 
dlers, shop-keepers or tailors; but some, not 
distinguishable in appearance from the proleta- 
rians, have "made their pile." Some are He- 
brew scholars, some of the older class of Yid- 
dish journalists. There 
are no young people 
there, for the young 
bring irreverence and 
the American spirit, and 
these cafes are strictly 
orthodox. 

ft In spite, therefore, of 
his American environ- 
ment, the old Jew of the 
Ghetto remains patri- 
archal, highly trained 
and educated in a 
narrow sectarian direc- 
tion, but entirely igno- 
rant of modern cul- 
ture ; medieval, in 
effect, submerged 
in old tradition and 
outworn forms. 




>7 



THE BOY 

The shrewd-faced boy with the melancholy 
eyes that one sees everywhere in the streets of 
New York's Ghetto, occupies a peculiar position 
in our society. If we could penetrate into his 
soul, we should see a mixture of almost unprece- 
dented hope and excitement on the one hand, 
and of doubt, confusion, and self-distrust on the 
other hand. Led in many contrary directions, 
the fact that he does not grow to be an intellec- 
tual anarchist is due to his serious racial charac- 
teristics. 

Three groups of influences are at work on him 
— the orthodox Jewish, the American, and the 
Socialist ; and he experiences them in this order. 
He has either been born in America of Russian, 
Austrian, or Roumanian Jewish parents, or has 
immigrated with them when a very young child. 
The first of the three forces at work on his 
character is religious and moral ; the second is 
practical, diversified, non-religious; and the third 
is reactionary from the other two and hostile to 
them. 

Whether born in this country or in Russia, the 
son of orthodox parents passes his earliest years 
in a family atmosphere where the whole duty of 
man is to observe the religious law. He learns 

j8 



THE 

MORNING 

PRAYER 




to say his prayers every morn- 
ing and evening, either at home 
or at the synagogue. At the 
age of five, he is taken to the 
Hebrew private school, the 
"chaider," where, in Russia, 
he spends most of his time from early morning 
till late at night. The ceremony accompanying 
his first appearance in "chaider" is significant 
of his whole orthodox life. Wrapped in a 
"talith," or praying shawl, he is carried by his 
father to the school and received there by the 
"melamed/' or teacher, who holds out before 
him the Hebrew alphabet on a large chart. 
Before beginning to learn the first letter of the 
alphabet, he is given a taste of honey, and when 

19 



he declares it to be sweet, he is told that the 
study of the Holy Law, upon which he is about 
to enter, is sweeter than honey. Shortly after- 
wards a coin falls from the ceiling, and the 
boy is told that an angel dropped it from heaven 
as a reward for learning the first lesson. 

In the Russian "chaider" the boy proceeds 
with a further study of the alphabet, then of the 
prayer-book, the Pentateuch, other portions of 
the Bible, and finally begins with the complicated 
Talmud. Confirmed at thirteen years of age, he 
enters the Hebrew academy and continues the 
study of the Talmud, to which, if he is successful, 
he will devote himself all his life. For his parents 
desire him to be a rabbi, or Talmudical scholar, 
and to give himself entirely to a learned inter- 
pretation of the sweet law. 

The boy's life at home, in Russia, conforms 
with the religious education received at the 
"chaider." On Friday afternoon, when the 
Sabbath begins, and on Saturday morning, when 
it continues, he is free from school, and on Friday 
does errands for his mother or helps in the prep- 
aration for the Sabbath. In the afternoon he 
commonly bathes, dresses freshly in Sabbath 
raiment, and goes to "chaider" in the evening. 
Returning from school, he finds his mother and 
sisters dressed in their best, ready to "greet the 

20 




GOING TO THE SYNAGOGUE 



Sabbath." The lights are glowing in the candle- 
sticks, the father enters with **Good Shabbas" 
on his lips, and is received by the grandparents, 
who occupy the seats of honor. They bless him 
and the children in turn. The father then chants 
the hymn of praise and salutation; a cup of wine 
or cider is passed from one to the other; every 
one washes his hands; all arrange themselves 
at table in the order of age, the youngest sitting 
at the father's right hand. After the meal they 
sing a song dedicated to the Sabbath, and say 
grace. The same ceremony is repeated on Sat- 
urday morning, and afterwards the children are 
examined in what they have learned of the Holy 
Law during the week. The numerous religious 
holidays are observed in the same way, with 
special ceremonies of their own in addition. The 
important thing to notice is, that the boy's whole 
training and education bear directly on ethics 
and religion, in the study of which he is encour- 
aged to spend his whole life. 

In a simple Jewish community in Russia, 
where the "chaider" is the only school, where 
the government is hostile, and the Jews are 
therefore thrown back upon their own customs, 
the boy loves his religion, he loves and honors 
his parents, his highest ambition is to be a great 
scholar — to know the Bible in all its glorious 



meaning, to know the Talmudical comments 
upon it, and to serve God. Above every one 
else he respects the aged, the Hebrew scholar, 
the rabbi, the teacher. Piety and wisdom count 
more than riches, talent and power. The " law " 
outweighs all else in value. Abraham and Moses, 
David and Solomon, the prophet Elijah, are the 
kind of great men to whom his imagination soars. 

But in America, even before he begins to go to 
our public schools, the little Jewish boy finds 
himself in contact with a new world which stands 
in violent contrast with the orthodox environ- 
ment of his first few years. Insensibly — at the 
beginning — from his playmates in the streets, 
from his older brother or sister, he picks up a 
little English, a little American slang, hears 
older boys boast of prize-fighter Bernstein, and 
learns vaguely to feel that there is a strange and 
fascinating life on the street. At this tender age 
he may even begin to black boots, gamble in 
pennies, and be filled with a "wild surmise" 
about American dollars. 

With his entrance into the public school the 
little fellow runs plump against a system of edu- 
cation and a set of influences which are at total 
variance with those traditional to his race and 
with his home life. The religious element is en- 
tirely lacking. The educational system of the 

23 



public schools is heterogeneous and worldly. 
The boy becomes acquainted in the school reader 
with fragments of writings on all subjects, with 
a little mathematics, a little history. His in- 
struction, in the interests of a liberal non-secta- 
rianism, is entirely secular. English becomes 
his most familiar language. He achieves a grow- 
ing comprehension and sympathy with the inde- 
pendent, free, rather sceptical spirit of the 
American boy ; he rapidly imbibes ideas about 
social equality and contempt for authority, and 
tends to prefer Sherlock Holmes to Abraham as 
a hero. 

The orthodox Jewish influences, still at work 
upon him, are rapidly weakened. He grows to 
look upon the ceremonial life at home as rather 
ridiculous. His old parents, who speak no Eng- 
lish, he regards as "greenhorns." English be- 
comes his habitual tongue, even at home, and 
Yiddish he begins to forget. He still goes to 
"chaider," but under conditions exceedingly dif- 
ferent from those obtaining in Russia, where 
there are no public schools, and where the boy 
is consequently shut up within the confines of 
Hebraic education. In America, the *'chaider" 
assumes a position entirely subordinate. Com- 
pelled by law to go to the American public 
school, the boy can attend "chaider" only before 

24 



the public school opens in the morning or after 
it closes in the afternoon. At such times the 
Hebrew teacher, who dresses in a long black 
coat, outlandish tall hat, and commonly speaks 
no English, visits the boy at home, or the boy 
goes to a neighboring "chaider." 

Contempt for the "chaider's" teaching comes 
the more easily because the boy rarely un- 
derstands his Hebrew lessons to the full. His 
real language is English, the teacher's is com- 
monly the Yiddish jargon, and the language to 
be learned is Hebrew. The problem before him 
is consequently the strangely difficult one of 
learning Hebrew, a tongue unknown to him, 
through a translation into Yiddish, a language 
of growing unfamiliarity, which, on account of 
its poor dialectic character, is an inadequate ve- 
hicle of thought. 

The orthodox parents begin to see that the 
boy, in order to "get along" in the New World, 
must receive a Gentile training. Instead of 
hoping to make a rabbi of him, they reluctantly 
consent to his becoming an American business 
man, or, still better, an American doctor or law- 
yer. The Hebrew teacher, less convinced of 
the usefulness and importance of his work, is 
in this country more simply commercial and 
less disinterested than abroad ; a man gener- 

25 



ally, too, of less scholarship as well as of less 
devotion. 

The growing- sense of superiority on the part 
of the boy to the Hebraic part of his environment 
extends itself soon to the home. He learns to 
feel that his parents, too, are "greenhorns." In 
the struggle between the two sets of influences 
that of the home becomes less and less effective. 
He runs away from the supper table to join his 
gang on the Bowery, where he is quick to pick 
up the very latest slang; where his talent for 
caricature is developed often at the expense of 
his parents, his race, and all "foreigners"; for 




i"""""^VTrtu 






THE "CHAIDER" 



he is an American, he is "the people," and like 
his glorious countrymen in general, he is quick 
to ridicule the stranger. He laughs at the for- 
eign Jew with as much heartiness as at the 
"dago"; for he feels that he himself is almost 
as remote from the one as from the other. 

"Why don't you say your evening prayer, my 
son?" asks his mother in Yiddish. 

"Ah, what yer givin' us!" replies, in English, 
the little American-Israelite as he makes a bee- 
line for the street. 

The boys not only talk together of picnics, of 
the crimes of which they read in the English 
newspapers, of prize-fights, of budding business 
propositions, but they gradually quit going to 
synagogue, give up "chaider" promptly when 
they are thirteen years old, avoid the Yiddish 
theatres, seek the up-town places of amusement, 
dress in the latest American fashion, and have a 
keen eye for the right thing in neckties. They 
even refuse sometimes to be present at supper 
on Friday evenings. Then, indeed, the sway of 
the old people is broken. 

" Amerikane Kinder, Amerikane Kinder ! " 
wails the old father, shaking his head. The 
trend of things is indeed too strong for the old 
man of the eternal Talmud and ceremony. 

An important circumstance in helping to de- 
27 



termine the boy's attitude toward his father is 
the tendency to reverse the ordinary and normal 
educational and economical relations existing 
between father and son. In Russia the father 
gives the son an education and supports him 
until his marriage, and often afterward, until the 
young man is able to take care of his wife and 
children. The father is, therefore, the head of 
the house in reality. But in the New World the 
boy contributes very early to the family's support. 
The father is in this country less able to make 
an economic place for himself than is the son. 
The little fellow sells papers, blacks boots, and 
becomes a street merchant on a small scale. As 
he speaks English, and his parents do not, he is 
commonly the interpreter in business transac- 
tions, and tends generally *:o take things into his 
own hands. There is a tendency, therefore, for 
the father to respect the son. 

There is many a huge building on Broadway 
which is the external sign (with the Hebrew 
name of the tenant emblazoned on some extended 
surface) of the energy and independence of some 
ignorant little Russian Jew, the son of a push- 
cart peddler or sweat-shop worker, wno began 
his business career on the sidewalks, selling 
newspapers, blacking boots, dealing in candles, 
shoe-strings, fruit, etc., and continued it by ped- 

28 



dling in New Jersey or on Long Island until he 
could open a small basement store on Hester 
Street, then a more extensive establishment on 
Canal Street — ending perhaps as a rich merchant 
on Broadway. The little fellow who starts out 
on this laborious climb is a model of industry 
and temperance. His only recreation, outside 
of business, which for him is a pleasure in itself, 
is to indulge in some simple pastime which gen- 
erally is calculated to teach him something. On 
Friday or Saturday afternoon he is likely, for 
instance, to take a long walk to the park, where 
he is seen keenly inspecting the animals and 
perhaps boasting of his knowledge about them. 
He is an acquisitive little fellow, and seldom en- 
joys himself unless he feels that he is adding to 
his figurative or literal stock. 

The cloak and umbrella business in New York 
is rapidly becoming monopolized by the Jews 
who began in the Ghetto ; and they are also 
very large clothing merchants. Higher, how- 
ever, than a considerable merchant in the world 
of business, the little Ghetto boy, born in a patri- 
archal Jewish home, has not yet attained. The 
Jews who as bankers, brokers, and speculators 
on Wall Street control millions never have been 
Ghetto Jews. They came from Germany, 
where conditions are very different from those 

29 



in Russia, Galicia, and Roumania, and where, 
through the comparatively liberal education of 
a secular character which they were able to 
obtain, they were already beginning to have a 
national life outside of the Jewish traditions. 
Then, too, these Jews who are now prominent 
in Wall Street have been in this country much 
longer than their Russian brethren. They are 
frequently the sons of Germans who in the last 
generation attained commercial rank. If they 
were born abroad, they came many years before 
the Russian immigration began and before the 
American Ghetto existed, and have conse- 
quently become thoroughly identified with 
American life. Some of them began, indeed, as 
peddlers on a very small scale ; travelled, as was 
more the habit with them then than now, all 
over the country; and rose by small degrees to 
the position of great financial operators. But 
they became so only by growing to feel very in- 
timately the spirit of American enterprise which 
enables a man to carry on the boldest operation 
in a calm spirit. 

To this boldness the son of the orthodox 
parents of our Ghetto has not yet attained. Com- 
ing from the cramped "quarter," with still a 
tinge of the patriarchal Jew in his blood, not yet 
thoroughly at home in the atmosphere of the 

30 



American "plunger," he is a little hesitant, 
though very keen, in business affairs. The con- 
servatism instilled in him by the pious old 
"greenhorn," his father, is a limitation to his 
American "nerve." He likes to deal in ponder- 
able goods, to be able to touch and handle his 
wares, to have them before his eyes. In the 
next generation, when in business matters also 
he will be an instinctive American, he will be- 
come as big a finan- 
cial speculator as any 
of them, but at pres- 
ent he is pretty well 
content with his 
growing business on 
Broadway and his fine 
residence up-town. 

Altho as compared 
with the American or 
German-Jew financier 
who does not turn a 
hair at the gain or loss 
of a million, and who 
in personal manner 
maintains a phleg- 
matic, Napoleonic 
calm which is almost 
the most impressive 




FRIDAY NIGHT PRAVJitJ 



thing in the world to an ordinary man, the 
young fellow of the Ghetto seems a hesitant lit- 
tle "dickerer," yet, of course, he is a rising busi- 
ness man, and, as compared to the world from 
which he has emerged, a very tremendous entity 
indeed. It is not strange, therefore, that this pro- 
gressive merchant, while yet a child, acquires a 
self-sufficiency, an independence, and sometimes 
an arrogance which not unnaturally, at least in 
form, is extended even toward his parents. 

If this boy were able entirely to forget his ori- 
gin, to cast off the ethical and religious influ- 
ences which are his birthright, there would be 
no serious struggle in his soul, and he would not 
represent a peculiar element in our society. He 
would be like any other practical, ambitious, 
rather worldly American boy. The struggle is 
strong because the boy's nature, at once relig- 
ious and susceptible, is strongly appealed to by 
both the old and new. At the same time that 
he is keenly sensitive to the charm of his Amer- 
ican environment, with its practical and national 
opportunities, he has still a deep love for his 
race and the old things. He is aware, and 
rather ashamed, of the limitations of his parents. 
He feels that the trend and weight of things are 
against them, that they are in a minority ; but 
yet in a real way the old people remain his con- 

32 



science, the visible representatives of a moral 
and religious tradition by which the boy may 
regulate his inner life. 

The attitude of such a boy toward his father 
and mother is sympathetically described by Dr. 
Blaustein, principal of the Educational Alliance : 

" Not knowing that I speak Yiddish, the boy 
often acts as interpreter between me and his 
exclusively Yiddish-speaking father and mother. 
He always shows a great fear that I should be 
ashamed of his parents and tries to show them 
in the best light. When he translates, he ex- 
presses, in his manner, great affection and ten- 
derness toward these people whom he feels he is 
protecting ; he not merely turns their Yiddish 
into good English, but modifies the substance of 
what they say in order to make them appear 
presentable, less outlandish and queer. He also 
manifests cleverness in translating for his par- 
ents what I say in English. When he finds that 
I can speak Yiddish and therefore can converse 
heart to heart with the old people, he is de- 
lighted. His face beams, and he expresses in 
every way that deep pleasure which a person 
takes in the satisfaction of honored proteges." 

The third considerable influence in the life of 
the Ghetto boy is that of the socialists. I am in- 
clined to think that this is the least important 
and the least desirable of the three in its effect 
on his character. 

33 



Socialism as it is agitated in the Jewish 
quarter consists in a wholesale rejection, often 
founded on a misunderstanding, of both Ameri- 
can and Hebraic ideals. The socialists harp 
monotonously on the relations between capital 
and labor, the injustice of classes, and assume 
literature to comprise one school alone, the Rus- 
sian, at the bottom of which there is a strongly 
anarchistic and reactionary impulse. The son 
of a socialist laborer lives in a home where the 
main doctrines are two : that the old religion is 
rubbish and that American institutions were in- 
vented to exploit the workingman. The natural 
effects on such a boy are two : a tendency to look 
with distrust at the genuinely American life about 
him, and to reject the old implicit piety. 

The ideal situation for this young Jew would 
be that where he could become an integral part 
of American life without losing the seriousness 
of nature developed by Hebraic tradition and 
education. At present he feels a conflict be- 
tween these two influences : his youthful ardor 
and ambition lead him to prefer the progressive, 
if chaotic and uncentred, American life ; but his 
conscience does not allow him entire peace in a 
situation which involves a chasm between him 
and his parents and their ideals. If he could 
find along the line of his more exciting interests 

34 



— the American — something that would fill the 
deeper need of his nature, his problem would 
receive a happy solution. 

At present, however, the powers that make for 
the desired synthesis of the old and the new are 
fragmentary and unimportant. They consist 
largely in more or less charitable institutions 
such as the University Settlement, the Educa- 
tional Alliance, and those free Hebrew schools 
which are carried on with definite reference to 
thie boy as an American citizen. The latter dif- 
fer from the "chaiders" in several respects. The 
important difference is that these schools are 
better organized, have better teachers, and have 
as a conscious end the supplementing of the 
boy's common school education. The attempt 
is to add to the boy's secular training an ethical 
and religious training through the intelligent 
study of the Bible. It is thought that an ac- 
quaintance with the old literature of the Jews is 
calculated to deepen and spiritualize the boy's 
nature. 

The Educational Alliance is a still better or- 
ganized and more intelligent institution, having 
much more the same purpose in view as the best 
Hebrew schools. Its avowed purpose is to com- 
bine the American and Hebrew elements, recon- 
cile fathers and sons by making the former more 

35 



American and the latter more Hebraic, and in 
that way improve the home life of the quarter. 
With the character of the University Settlement 
nearly everybody is familiar. It falls in line 
with Anglo-Saxon charitable institutions, forms 
classes, improves the condition of the poor, and 
acts as an ethical agent. But, tho such insti- 
tutions as the above may do a great deal of good, 
they are yet too fragmentary and external, are 
too little a vital growth from the conditions, to 
supply the demand for a serious life which at the 
same time shall be American. 

But the Ghetto boy is making use of his heter- 
ogeneous opportunities with the greatest energy 
and ambition. The public schools are filled with 
little Jews ; the night schools of the east side are 
practically used by no other race. City College, 
New York University, and Columbia University 
are graduating Russian Jews in numbers rapidly 
increasing. Many lawyers, indeed, children of 
patriarchal Jews, have very large practices al- 
ready, and some of them belong to solid firms on 
Wall Street ; although as to business and finan- 
cial matters they have not yet attained to the 
most spectacular height. Then there are innu- 
merable boys' debating clubs, ethical clubs, and 
literary clubs in the east side ; altogether there 
is an excitement in ideas and an enthusiastic 

3^ 



energy for acquiring knowledge which has inter- 
esting analogy to the hopefulness and acquisitive 
desire of the early Renaissance. It is a mistake 
to think that the young Hebrew turns naturally 
to trade. He turns his energy to whatever offers 
the best opportunities for broader life and suc- 
cess. Other things besides business are open to 
him in this country, and he is improving his 
chance for the higher education as devotedly as 
he has improved his opportunities for success in 
business. 

It is easy to see that the Ghetto boy's growing 
Americanism will be easily triumphant at once 
over the old traditions and the new socialism. 
Whether or not he will be able to retain his 
moral earnestness and native idealism will de- 
pend not so much upon him as upon the develop- 
ment of American life as a whole. What we 
need at the present time more than anything else 
is a spiritual unity such as, perhaps, will only be 
the distant result of our present special activities. 
We need something similar to the spirit under- 
lying the national and religious unity of the 
orthodox Jewish culture. 

Altho the young men of the Ghetto who 
represent at once the most intelligent and the 
most progressively American are, for the most 
part, floundering about without being able to 

37 



find the social growths upon which they can rest 
as true Americans while retaining their spiritual 
and religious earnestness, there are yet a small 
number of them who have already attained a 
synthesis not lacking in the ideal. I know a 
young artist, a boy born in the Ghetto, who be- 
gan his conscious American life with contempt for 
the old things, but who with growing culture has 
learned to perceive the beauty of the traditions 
and faith of his race. He puts into his paint- 
ings of the types of Hester Street an imagina- 
tive, almost religious, idealism, and his artistic 
sympathy seems to extend particularly to the old 
people. He, for one, has become reconciled to 
the spirit of his father without ceasing to be an 
American. And he is not alone. There are 
other young Jews, of American university edu- 
cation, of strong ethical and spiritual character, 
who are devoting themselves to the work of 
forming, among the boys of the Ghetto, an ideal 
at once American and consistent with the spirit 
at the heart of the Hebraic tradition. 

THE ''INTELLECTUALS" 

Between the old people, with their religion, 

their traditions, the life pointing to the past, and 

the boy with his young life eagerly absorbent of 

the new tendencies, is a third class which may 



be called the " Intellectuals " of the Ghetto. This 
is the most picturesque and interesting, altho 
not the most permanently significant, of all. The 
members of this class are interesting for what 
they are rather than for what they have been or 
for what they may become. They are the anar- 
chists, the socialists, the editors, the writers; 
some of the scholars, poets, playwrights and 
actors of the quarter. They are the "enlight- 
ened" ones who are at once neither orthodox 
Jews nor Americans. Coming from Russia, they 
are reactionary in their political opinions, and in 
matters of taste and literary ideals are Euro- 
peans rather than Americans. When they die 
they will leave nothing behind them ; but while 
they live they include the most educated, forcible, 
and talented personalities of the quarter. Most 
of them are socialists, and, as I pointed out in 
the last section, socialism is not a permanently 
nutritive element in the life of the Ghetto, for as 
yet the Ghetto has not learned to know the con- 
ditions necessary to American life, and can not, 
therefore, effectively react against them. 

It is this class which contains, however, the 
many men of "ideas" who bring about in certain 
circles a veritable intellectual fermentation; and 
are therefore most interesting from what might 
be called a literary point of view, as well as of 

3y 



great importance in the education of the people. 
Gifted Russian Jews hold forth passionately to 
crowds of working men; devoted writers exploit 
in the Yiddish newspapers the principles of 
their creed and take violent part in the labor 
agitation of the east side ; or produce realistic 
sketches of the life in the quarter, underlying 
which can be felt the same kind of revolt which is 
apparent in the analogous literature of Russia. 
The intellectual excitement in the air causes 
many "splits" among the socialists. They 
gather in hostile camps, run rival organs, each 
prominent man has his "patriots," or faithful 
adherents who support him right or wrong. 
Intense personal abuse and the most violent 
denunciation of opposing principles are the rule. 
Mellowness, complacency, geniality, and calm- 
ness are qualities practically unknown to the 
intellectual Russian Jews, who, driven from the 
old country, now possess the first opportunity to 
express themselves. On the other hand they 
are free of the stupid Philistinism of content and 
are not primarily interested in the dollar. Their 
poets sing pathetically of the sweat-shops, of 
universal brotherhood, of the abstract rights of 
man. Their enthusiastic young men gather 
every evening in cafes of the quarter and become 
habitually intoxicated with the excitement of 

40 




IN THESE CAFES THEY MEET AFTER THE THEATRE 
OR AN EVENING LECTURE 



ideas. In their restless and feverish eyes shines 
the intense ideaHsm of the combined Jew and 
Russian — the moral earnestness of the Hebrew 
united with the passionate, rebellious mental 
activity of the modern Muscovite. In these cafes 
they meet after the theatre or an evening lecture 
and talk into the morning hours. The ideal, 
indeed, is alive within them. The defect of their 
intellectual ideas is that they are not founded on 
historical knowledge, or on knowledge of the 
conditions with which they have to cope. In 
their excitement and extremeness they resemble 
the spirit of the French "intellectuals" of 1789 
rather than that more conservative feeling which 
has always directed the development of Anglo- 
Saxon communities. 

Among the "intellectuals" may be classed a 
certain number of poets, dramatists, musicians, 
and writers, who are neither socialists nor anar- 
chists, constituting what might roughly be called 
the literary " Bohemia " of the quarter ; men who 
pursue their art for the love of it simply, or who 
are thereto impelled by the necessity of making 
a precarious living; men really without ideas in 
the definite, belligerent sense, often uneducated, 
but often of considerable native talent. There 
are also many men of brains who form a large 
professional class — doctors, lawyers, and dentists 

42 



— and who yet are too old when they come to 
America to be thoroughly identified with the life. 
They are, however, a useful part of the Jewish 
community, and, like others of the "intellectual" 
class, are often men of great devotion, who have 
left comparative honor and comfort in the old 
country in order to live and work with the perse- 
cuted or otherwise less fortunate brethren. 

The greater number of the following chapters 
deal with the men of this "intellectual" class, 
their personalities, their literary work and the 
light it throws upon the life of the people in the 
New York Ghetto. 



43 



Chapter Tnvo 



^ropijets toitijout ?|onor 

^* 

SUBMERGED SCHOLARS 

A ragged man, who looks like a peddler or a 
beggar, picking his way through the crowded 
misery of Hester Street, or ascending the stairs 
of one of the dingy tenement-houses full of 
sweat-shops that line that busy mart of the poor 
Ghetto Jew, may be a great Hebrew scholar. He 
may be able to speak and write the ancient 
tongue with the facility of a modern language — 
as fluently as the ordinary Jew makes use of the 
*' jargon," the Yiddish of the people; he may be 
a manifold author with a deep and pious love for 
the beautiful poetry in his literature ; and in 
character an enthusiast, a dreamer, or a good 
and reverend old man. But no matter what his 
attainments and his quality he is unknown and 
unhonored, for he has pinned his faith to a 
declining cause, writes his passionate accents in 
a tongue more and more unknown even to the 
cultivated Jew ; and consequently amid the 
crowding and material interests of the new world 

44 



he is submerged — poor in physical estate and his 
moral capital unrecognized by the people among 
whom he lives. 

Not only unrecognized by the ignorant and the 
busy and their teachers the rabbis, who in New 
York are frequently nearly as ignorant as the 



h , . . |, 



■'"^WSte^-^-'. 






HE IS UNKNOWN AND UNHONORED 



people, he is also (as his learning is limited 
largely to the literature of his race) looked down 
upon by the influential and intellectual element 
of the Ghetto— an element socialistic, in literary 

45 



sympathy Russian rather than Hebraic, intolerant 
of everything not violently modern, wedded to 
"movements" and scornful of the past. The 
"maskil," therefore, or "man of wisdom " — the 
Hebrew scholar — is called "old fogy," or "dilet- 
tante," by the up-to-date socialists. 

Of such men there are several in the humble 
corners of the New York Ghetto. One peddles 
for a living, another has a small printing-office in 
a basement on Canal Street, a third occasionally 
tutors in some one of many languages and sells 
a patent medicine, and a fourth is the principal 
of the Talmud-Thora, a Hebrew school in the 
Harlem Ghetto, where he teaches the children 
to read, write, and pray in the Hebrew language. 

Moses Reicherson is the name of the principal. 
"Man of wisdom" of the purest kind, probably 
the finest Hebrew grammarian in New York, and 
one of the finest in the world, his income from 
his position at the head of the school is $5 a 
week. He is seventy-three years old, wears a 
thick gray beard, a little cap on his head, and a 
long black coat. His wife is old and bent. They 
are alone in their miserable little apartment on 
East One Hundred and Sixth Street. Their son 
died a year or two ago, and to cover the funeral 
expenses Mr. Reicherson tried in vain to sell his 
" Encyclopaedia Britannica." But, nevertheless, 

46 



the old scholar, who had been bending over his 
closely written manuscript, received the visitor 
with almost cheerful politeness, and told the 
story of his work and of his ambitions. Of his 
difficulties and privations he said little, but they 
shone through his words and in the character of 
the room in which he lived. 

Born in Vilna, sometimes called the Jerusalem 
of Lithuania or the Athens of modern Judsea 
because of the number of enlightened Jews who 
have been born there, many of whom now live 
in the Russian Jewish quarter of New York, he 
has retained the faith of his orthodox parents, a 
faith, however, springing from the pure origin of 
Judaism rather than holding to the hair-splitting 
distinctions later embodied in the Talmud. He 
was a teacher of Hebrew in his native town for 
many years, where he stayed until he came to 
New York some years ago to be near his son. 
His two great intellectual interests, subordinated 
indeed to the love of the old literature and 
religion, have been Hebrew grammar and the 
moral fables of several languages. On the 
former he has written an important work, and of 
the latter has translated much of Lessing's and 
Gellert's work into pure Hebrew. He has also 
translated into his favorite tongue the Russian 
fable-writer Krilow; has written fables of his 

47 



own, and a Hebrew commentary on the Bible 
in twenty-four volumes. He loves the fables 
"because they teach the people and are real 
criticism ; they are profound and combine fancy 
and thought." Many of these are still in manu- 
script, which is characteristic of much of the 
work of these scholars, for they have no money, 
and publishers do not run after Hebrew books. 
Also unpublished, written in lovingly minute 
characters, he has a Hebrew prayer-book in 
many volumes. He has written hundreds of 
articles for the Hebrew weeklies and monthlies, 
which are fairly numerous in this country, but 
which seldom can afford to pay their contributors. 
At present he writes exclusively for a He^brew 
weekly published in Chicago, Regeneration, the 
object of which is to promote "the knowledge 
of the ancient Hebrew language and literature, 
and to regenerate the spirit of the nation." For 
this he receives no pay, the editor being almost 
as poor as himself. But he writes willingly for 
the love of the cause, "for universal good " ; for 
Reicherson, in common with the other neglected 
scholars, is deeply interested in revivifying what 
is now among American Jews a dead language. 
He believes that in this way only can the Jewish 
people be taught the good and the true. 

"When the national language and literature 
48 




MOSES REICHERSON 



live," he said, "the nation lives; 
when dead, so is the nation. 
The holy tongue in which the 
Bible was written must not 
die. If it should, much 
of the truth of the Bible, 
many of its spiritual se- 
crets, much of its beau- 
tiful poetry, would be 
lost. I have gone deep 
into the Bible, that 
greatest book, all my 
life, and I know many of 
its secrets." He beamed with pride as he said 
these words, and his sense of the beauty of the 
Hebrew spirit and the Hebrew literature led him 
to speak wonderingly of Anti-Semitism. This 
cause seemed to him to be founded on ignorance 
of the Bible. *' If the Anti-Semites would only 
study the Bible, would go deep into the knowl- 
edge of Hebrew and the teaching of Christ, then 
everything would be sweet and well. If they 
would spend a little of that money in supporting 
the Hebrew language and literature and ex- 
plaining the sacred books which they now use 
against our race, they would see that they are 
Anti-Christians rather than Anti-Semites." 
The scholar here bethought himself of an old 



49 



fable he had translated into Hebrew. Cold and 
Warmth make a wager that the traveller will 
unwrap his cloak sooner to one than to the 
other. The fierce wind tries its best, but at 
every cold blast the traveller only wraps his 
cloak the closer. But when the sun throws its 
rays the wayfarer gratefully opens his breast to 
the warming beams. "Love solves all things," 
said the old man, "and hate closes up the channels 
to knowledge and virtue." Believing the Pope 
to be a good man with a knowledge of the 
Bible, he wanted to write him about the Anti- 
Semites, but desisted on the reflection that the 
Pope was very old and overburdened, and that 
the letter would probably fall into the hands of 
the cardinals. 

All this was sweetly said, for about him there 
was nothing of the attitude of complaint. His 
wife once or twice during the interview touched 
upon their personal condition, but her husband 
severely kept his mind on the universal truths, and 
only when questioned admitted that he would 
like a little more money, in order to publish his 
books and to enable him to think with more 
concentration about the Hebrew language and 
literature. There was no bitterness in his refer- 
ence to the neglect of Hebrew scholarship in the 
Ghetto. His interest was impersonal and de- 

5° 



tached, and his regret at the decadence of the 
language seemed noble and disinterested; and, 
unlike some of the other scholars, the touch of 
warm humanity was in everything he said. 
Indeed, he is rather the learned teacher of the 
people with deep religious and ethical sense than 
the scholar who cares only for learning. " In the 
name of God, adieu ! " he said, with quiet intensity 
when the visitor withdrew. 

Contrasting sharply in many respects with 
this beautiful old teacher is the man who peddles 
from tenement-house to tenement-house in the 
down-town Ghetto, to support himself and his 
three young children. S. B. Schwartzberg, unlike 
most of the "submerged" scholars, is still a 
young man, only thirty-seven years old, but he 
is already discouraged, bitter, and discontented. 
He feels himself the apostle of a lost cause — the 
regeneration in New York of the old Hebrew 
language and literature. His great enterprise 
in life has failed. He has now given it up, and 
the natural vividness and intensity of his nature 
get satisfaction in the strenuous abuse of the 
Jews of the Ghetto. 

He was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of a 
distinguished rabbi. In common with many 
Russian and Polish Jews, he early obtained a 
living knowledge of the Hebrew language, and 

51 



a great love of the literature, which he knows 
thoroughly, altho, unlike Reicherson and a 
scholar who is to be mentioned, Rosenberg, he 
has not contributed to the literature in a scientific 
sense. He is slightly bald, with burning black 
eyes, an enthusiastic and excited manner, and 
talks with almost painful earnestness. 

Three years ago Schwartzberg came to this 
country with a great idea in his head. "In this 
free country," he thought to himself, "where 
there are so many Russian and Polish Jews, it 
is a pity that our tongue is dying, is falling into 
decay, and that the literature and traditions that 
hold our race together are being undermined by 
materialism and ethical skepticism." He had a 
little money, and he decided he would establish 
a journal in the interests of the Hebrew language 
and literature. No laws would prevent him here 
from speaking his mind in his beloved tongue. 
He would bring into vivid being again the national 
spirit of his people, make them love with the old 
fervor their ancient traditions and language. It 
was the race's spirit of humanity and feeling for 
the ethical beauty, not the special creed of 
Judaism, for which he and the other scholars 
care little, that filled him with the enthusiasm of 
an apostle. In his monthly magazine, the Western 
Light, he put his best efforts, his best thoughts 

52 



about ethical truths and literature. The poet 
Dolitzki contributed in purest Hebrew verse, as 
did many other Ghetto lights. But it received 
no support, few bought it, and it lasted only a 
year. Then he gave it up, bankrupt in money 
and hope. That was several years ago, and 
since then he has peddled for a living. 

The failure has left in Schwartzberg's soul a 
passionate hatred of what he calls the material- 
ism of the Jews in America. Only in Europe, he 
thinks, does the love of the spiritual remain with 
them. Of the rabbis of the Ghetto he spoke with 
bitterness. "They," he said, '-are the natural 
teachers of the people. They could do much for 
the Hebrew literature and language. Why don't 
they? Because they know no Hebrew and have 
no culture. In Russia the Jews demand that 
their rabbis should be learned and spiritual, but 
here they are ignorant and materialistic." So 
Mr. Schwartzberg wrote a pamphlet which is 
now famous in the Ghetto. "I wrote it with my 
heart's blood," he said, his eyes snapping. " In 
it I painted the spiritual condition of the Jews in 
New York in the gloomiest of colors." 

"It is terrible," he proceeded vehemently. 
"Not one Hebrew magazine can exist in this 
country. They all fail, and yet there are many 
beautiful Hebrew writers to-day. When Dolitzki 

53 



was twenty years old in Russia he was looked 
up to as a great poet. But what do the Jews 
care about him here ? For he writes in Hebrew ! 
Why, Hebrew scholars are regarded by the Jews 
as tramps, as useless beings. Driven from Russia 
because we are Jews, we are despised in New 
York because we are Hebrew scholars! The 
rabbis, too, despise the learned Hebrew, and 
they have a fearful influence on the ignorant 
people. If they can dress well and speak English 
it is all they want. It is a shame how low-minded 
these teachers of the people are. I was born of 
a rabbi, and brought up by him, but in Russia 
they are for literature and the spirit, while in 
America it is just the other way." 

The discouraged apostle of Hebrew literature 
now sees no immediate hope for the cause. 
What seems to him the most beautiful lyric poetry 
in the world he thinks doomed to the imperfect 
understanding of generations for whom the 
language does not live. The only ultimate hope 
is in the New Jerusalem. Consequently the fiery 
scholar, altho not a Zionist, thinks well of 
the movement as tending to bring the Jews 
again into a nation which shall revive the old 
tongue and traditions. Mr. Schwartzberg re- 
ferred to some of the other submerged scholars 
of the Ghetto. His eyes burned with indignation 

54 



when he spoke of Moses Reicherson. He could 
hardly control himself at the thought that the 
greatest Hebrew grammarian living, "an old 
man, too, a reverend old man," should be brought 
to such a pass. In the same strain of outrage 
he referred to another old man, a scholar who 
would be as poor as Reicherson and himself 
were it not for his wife, who is a dressmaker. 
It is she who keeps him out of the category of 
"submerged" scholars. 

But the Rev. H. Rosenberg, of whose condition 
Schwartzberg also bitterly complained, is indeed 
submerged. He runs a printing-office in a Canal 
Street basement, where he sits in the damp all 
day long waiting for an opportunity to publish 
his magnum opus, a cyclopedia of Biblical litera- 
ture, containing an historical and geographical 
description of the persons, places, and objects 
mentioned in the' Bible. All the Ghetto scholars 
speak of this work with bated breath, as a 
tremendously learned affair. Only two volumes 
of it have been published. To give the remainder 
to the world, Mr. Rosenberg is waiting for his 
children, who are nearly self-supporting, to 
contribute their mite. He is a man of sixty-two, 
with the high, bald forehead of a scholar. For 
twenty years he was a rabbi in Russia, and 
has preached in thirteen synagogues. He has 

55 



been nine years in New York, and, in addition to 
the great cyclopedia, has written, but not pub- 
lished, a cyclopedia of Talmudical literature. 
A "History of the Jews," in the Russian lan- 
guage, and a Russian novel, " The Jew of 
Trient," are among his published works. He is 
one of the most learned of all of these men who 
have a living, as well as an exact, knowledge of 
what is generally regarded as a dead language 

and literature. 

Altho he is waiting to 
publish the great cyclo- 
pedia, he is patient and 
cold. He has not the 
sweet enthusiasm of 
Reicherson, and not the 
vehement and partisan 
passion of Schwartzberg. 
He has the coldness of old 
age, without its spiritual 
glow, and scholarship is 
the only idea that moves 
him. Against the rabbis 
he has no complaint to 
make ; with them, he 
said, he had nothing to 
4,'^\ do. He thinks that 
Schwartzbergis ex- 




treme and unfair, and that there are good 
and bad rabbis in New York. He is reserved 
and undemonstrative, and speaks only in reply. 
When the rather puzzled visitor asked him if 
there was anything in which he was interested, 
he replied, "Yes, in my cyclopedia." The only 
point at which he betrayed feeling was when he 
quoted proudly the words of a reviewer of the 
cyclopedia, who had wondered where Dr. Rosen- 
berg had obtained all his learning. He stated 
indifferently that the Hebrew language and 
literature is dead and cannot be revived. "I 
know," he said, "that Hebrew literature does 
not pay, but I cannot stop." With no indigna- 
tion, he remarked that the Jews in New York 
have no ideals. It was a fact objectively to be 
deplored, but for which he personally had no emo- 
tion, all of that being reserved for his cyclopedia. 
These three men are perfect types of the 
"submerged Hebrew scholar" of the New York 
Ghetto. Reicherson is the typical religious 
teacher ; Schwartzberg, the enthusiast, who loves 
the language like a mistress, and Rosenberg, the 
cool "man of wisdom," who only cares for the 
perfection of knowledge. Altho there are several 
others on the east side who approach the type, 
they fall more or less short of it. Either they 
are not really scholars in the old tongue, altho 

57 



reading and even writing it, or through business 
or otherwise they have raised themselves above 
the pathetic point. Thus Dr. Benedict Ben- 
Zion, one of the poorest of all, being reduced to 




SUBMERGED SCHOLARS" 



occasional tutoring, and the sale of a patent 
medicine for a living, is not specifically a scholar. 
He writes and reads Hebrew, to be sure, but is 
also a playwright in the "jargon;" has been a 

5^ 



Christian missionary to his own people in Egypt, 
Constantinople, and Rumania, a doctor for many 
years, a teacher in several languages, one who 
has turned his hand to everything, and whose 
heart and mind are not so purely Hebraic as 
those of the men I have mentioned. He even is 
seen, more or less, with Ghetto literati who are 
essentially hostile to what the true Hebrew 
scholar holds by — a body of Russian Jewish 
socialists of education, who in their Grand and 
Canal Street cafes express every night in impas- 
sioned language their contempt for whatever is 
old and historical. 

Then, there are J. D. Eisenstein, the youngest 
and one of the most learned, but perhaps the 
least " submerged " of them all ; Gerson Rosen- 
schweig, a wit, who has collected the epigrams 
of the Hebrew literature, added many of his 
own, and written in Hebrew a humorous 
treatise on America — a very up-to-date Jew, 
who, like Schwartzberg, tried to run a Hebrew 
weekly, but when he failed, was not discour- 
aged, and turned to business and politics in- 
stead ; and Joseph Low Sossnitz, a very learned 
scholar, of dry and sarcastic tendency, who 
only recently has risen above the submerged 
point. Among the latter's most notable pub- 
lished books are a philosophical attack on ma- 

59 



terialism, a treatise on the sun, and a work on 
the philosophy of reHgion. 

It is the wrench between the past and the 
present which has placed these few scholars in 
their present pathetic condition. Most of them 
are old, and when they die the "maskil" as a 
type will have vanished from New York. In the 
meantime, tho they starve, they must devote 
themselves to the old language, the old ideas 
and traditions of culture. Their poet, the austere 
Dolitzki, famous in Russia at the time of the 
revival of Hebrew twenty years ago, is the only 
man in New York who symbolizes in living verse 
the spirit in which these old men live, the spirit 
of love for the race as most purely expressed in 
the Hebrew literature. This disinterested love 
for the remote, this pathetic passion to keep the 
dead alive, is what lends to the lives of these 
"submerged" scholars a nobler quality than 
what is generally associated with the east side. 

THE POOR RABBIS 
The rabbis, as well as the scholars, of the east 
side of New York have their grievances. They, 
too, are "submerged," like so much in humanity 
that is at once intelligent, poor, and out-of-date. 
As a lot, they are old, reverend men, with long 
gray beards, long black coats and little black 

60 



caps on their heads. They are mainly very poor, 
live in the barest of the tenement houses and 
pursue a calling which no longer involves much 
honor or standing. In the old country, in Russia 
— for most of the poor ones are Russian — the 
rabbi is a great person. He is made rabbi by the 
state and is rabbi all his life, and the only rabbi 
in the town, for all the Jews in every city form 
one congregation, of which there is but one rabbi 
and one cantor. He is a man always full of 
learning and piety, and is respected and sup- 
ported comfortably by the congregation, a tax 
being laid on meat, salt, and other foodstuffs for 
his special benefit. 

But in New York it is very different. Here 
there are hundreds of congregations, one in 
almost every street, for the Jews come from 
many different cities and towns in the old country, 
and the New York representatives of every little 
place in Russia must have their congregation 
here. Consequently, the congregations are for 
the most part small, poor and unimportant. Few 
can pay the rabbi more than $3 or $4 a week, 
and often, instead of having a regular salary, he 
is reduced to occasional fees for his services at 
weddings, births and holy festivals generally. 
Some very poor congregations get along without 
a rabbi at all, hiring one for special occasions, 

61 




but these are congregations which are falling off 
somewhat from their orthodox strictness. 

The result of this state of affairs is a pretty 
general falling off in the character of the rabbis. 
In Russia they are learned men— know the 
Talmud and all the commentaries upon it by 
heart — and have degrees from the rabbinical 
colleges, but here they are often without degrees, 
frequently know comparatively little about the 
Talmud, and are sometimes actuated by worldly 
motives. A few Jews coming to New 
York from some small Russian town, 
will often select for a rabbi the man 
among them who knows a little more 
of the Talmud than the others, 
whether he has ever studied for the 
calling or not. Then, again, some 
mere adventurers get into the posi- 
tion — men good for nothing, looking 
for a position. They clap a high hat 
on their heads, impose on a poor con- 
gregation with their up-to-dateness 
and become rabbis without learning 
or piety. These " fake " rabbis 
— "rabbis for business only" 
— are often satirized in the Yid- 
dish plays given at the Bowery 
theatres. On the stage they 
62 




i^^eZi 



are ridiculous figures, ape American manners in 
bad accents, and have a keen eye for gain. 

The genuine, pious rabbis in the New York 
Ghetto feel, consequently, that they have their 
grievances. They, the accomplished interpre- 
ters of the Jewish law, are well-nigh submerged 
by the frauds that flood the city. But this is not 
the only sorrow of the *' real " rabbi of the Ghetto. 
The rabbis uptown, the rich rabbis, pay little 
attention to the sufferings, moral and physical, 
of their downtown brethren. For the most part 
the uptown rabbi is of the German, the down- 
town rabbi of the Russian branch of the Jewish 
race, and these two divisions of the Hebrews 
hate one another like poison. Last winter when 
Zangwill's dramatized Children of the Ghetio was 
produced in New York the organs of the swell up- 
town German-Jew protested that it was a pity to 
represent faithfully in art the sordidness as well 
as the beauty of the poor Russian Ghetto Jew. 
It seemed particularly baneful that the religious 
customs of the Jews should be thus detailed upon 
the stage. The uptown Jew felt a little ashamed 
that the proletarians of his people should be made 
the subject of literature. The downtown Jews, 
the Russian Jews, however, received play and 
stories with delight, as expressing truthfully their 
life and character, of which they are not ashamed. 

63 



Another cause of irritation between the down- 
town and uptown rabbis is a difference of religion. 
The uptown rabbi, representing congregations 
larger in this country and more American in 
comfort and tendency, generally is of the " re- 
formed " complexion, a hateful thought to the 
orthodox downtown rabbi, who is loath to admit 
that the term rabbi fits these swell German 
preachers. He maintains that, since the uptown 
rabbi is, as a rule, not only " reformed " in faith, 
but in preaching as well, he is in reality no rabbi, 
for, properly speaking, a rabbi is simply an 
interpreter of the law, one with whom the Tal- 
mudical wisdom rests, and who alone can give it 
out ; not one who exhorts, but who, on applica- 
tion, can untie knotty points of the law. The 
uptown rabbis they call ** preachers," with some 
disdain. 

So that the poor, downtrodden rabbis — those 
among them who look upon themselves as the 
only genuine — have many annoyances to bear. 
Despised and neglected by their rich brethren, 
without honor or support in their own poor 
communities, and surrounded by a rabble of 
unworthy rivals, the "real" interpreter of the 
** law " in New York is something of an object 
of pity. 

Just who the most genuine downtown rabbis 
64 



are is, no doubt, a matter of dispute. I will not 
attempt to determine, but will quote in substance 
a statement of Rabbi Weiss as to genuine 
rabbis, which will include a curious section of 
the history of the Ghetto. He is a jolly old 
man, and smokes his pipe in a tenement-house 
room containing 200 books of the Talmud and 
allied writings. 

"A genuine rabbi," he said, "knows the law, 
and sits most of the time in his room, ready to 
impart it. If an old woman comes in with a 
goose that has been killed, the rabbi can tell 
her, after she has explained how the animal met 
its death, whether or not it is koshur, whether it 
may be eaten or not. And on any other point of 
diet or general moral or physical hygiene the 
rabbi is ready to explain the law of the Hebrews 
from the time of Adam until to-day. It is he who 
settles many of the quarrels of the neighborhood. 
The poor sweat-shop Jew comes to complain of 
his "boss," the old woman to tell him her dreams 
and get his interpretation of them, the young 
girl to weigh with him questions of amorous 
etiquette. Our children do not need to go to the 
Yiddish theatres to learn about "greenhorn" 
types. They see all sorts of Ghetto Jews in the 
house of the rabbi, their father. 

"I myself was the first genuine rabbi on the 



east side of New York, I am now sixty-two 
years old, and came here sixteen years ago — 
came for pleasure, but my wife followed me, and 
so I had to stay." 

Here the old rabbi smiled cheerfully. "When 
I came to New York," he proceeded, "I found 
the Jews here in a very bad way— eating meat 
that was "thrapho," not allowed, because killed 
improperly; literally, killed by a brute. The 
slaughter-houses at that time had no rabbi to 
see that the meat was properly killed, was koshur 
— all right. 

"You can imagine my horror. The slaughter- 
houses had been employing an orthodox Jew, 
who, however, was not a rabbi, to see that the 
meat was properly killed, and he had been doing 
things all wrong, and the chosen people had 
been living abominably. I immediately explained 
the proper way of killing meat, and since then 
I have regulated several slaughter-houses and 
make my living in that way. I am also rabbi 
of a congregation, but it is so small that it 
doesn't pay. The slaughter-houses are more 
profitable." 

These "submerged" rabbis are not always quite 
fair to one another. Some east side authorities 
maintain that the " orthodox Jew " of whom 
Rabbi Weiss spoke thus contemptuously, was 

66 



1 




THE RABBI CAN TELL WHETHER OR NOT 
IT IS KOSHUR 



one of the finest rabbis who ever came to New 
York, one of the most erudite of Taimudic 
scholars. Many congregations united to call 
him to America in 1887, so great was his renown 
in Russia. But when he reached New York the 
general fate of the intelligent adult immigrant 
overtook him. Even the "orthodox" in New 
York looked upon him as a "greenhorn" and 
deemed his sermons out-of-date. He was in- 
clined, too, to insist upon a stricter observance 
of the law than suited their lax American ideas. 
So he, too, famous in Russia, rapidly became 
one of the "submerged." 

One of the most learned, dignified and impres- 
sive rabbis of the east side is Rabbi Vidrovitch. 
He was a rabbi for forty years in Russia, and for 
nine years in New York. Like all true rabbis he 
does not preach, but merely sits in his home and 
expounds the " law." He employs the Socratic 
method of instruction, and is very keen in his 
indirect mode of argument. Keenness, indeed, 
seems to be the general result of the hair-split- 
ting Rabbinical education. The uptown rabbis, 
"preachers," as the down-town rabbi contemp- 
tuously calls them, send many letters to Rabbi 
Vidrovitch seeking his help in the untying of 
knotty points of the "law." It was from him 
that Israel Zangwill, when the Children of the 

68 



Ghetto was produced on the New York stage, 
obtained a minute description of the orthodox 
marriage ceremonies. Zangwill caused to be 
taken several flash-light photographs of the old 
rabbi, surrounded by his books and dressed in 
his official garments. 

There are many congregations in the New 
York Ghetto which have no rabbis and many 
rabbis who have no congregations. Two rabbis 
who have no congregations are Rabbi Beinush 
and Rabbi, or rather, Cantor, Weiss. Rabbi 
Weiss would say of Beinush that he is a man 
who knows the Talmud, but has no diploma. 
Rabbi Beinush is an extremely poor rabbi with 
neither congregation nor slaughter-houses, who 
sits in his poor room and occasionally sells his 
wisdom to a fishwife who wants to know if some 
piece of meat is koshur or not. He is down on 
the rich up-town rabbis, who care nothing for 
the law, as he puts it, and who leave the poor 
down-town rabbi to starve. 

Cantor Weiss is also without a job. The duty 
of the cantor is to sing the prayer in the congre- 
gation, but Cantor Weiss sings only on holidays, 
for he is not paid enough, he says, to work regu- 
larly, the cantor sharing in this country a fate 
similar to that of the rabbi. The famous come- 
dian of the Ghetto, Mogolesco, was, as a boy, 

69 



one of the most noted cantors in Russia. As an 
actor in the New York Ghetto he makes twenty 
times as much money as the most accomplished 
cantor here. Cantor Weiss is very bitter 
against the up-town cantors : " They shorten 
the prayer," he said. " They are not orthodox. 
It is too hot in the synagogue for the comfortable 
up-town cantors to pray." 

Comfortable Philistinism, progress and en- 
lightment up town ; and poverty, orthodoxy and 
patriotic and religious sentiment, with a touch 
of the material also, down town. Such seems 
to be the difference between the German and 
the Russian Jew in this country, and in particu- 
lar between the German and Russian Jewish 
rabbi. 



70 



Chapter Three 

C|)e (BVb anD J^eto ^oman 

*^ 

The women present in many respects a marked 
contrast to their American sisters. Substance as 
opposed to form, simplicity of mood as opposed 
to capriciousness, seem to be in broad lines their 
relative qualities. They have comparatively few 
etats d'ame; but those few are revealed with 
directness and passion. They lack the subtle 
charm of the American woman, who is full of 
feminine devices, complicated flirtatiousness ; 
who in her dress and personal appearance seeks 
the plastic epigram, and in her talk and relation 
to the world an indirect suggestive delicacy. 
They are poor in physical estate ; many work or 
have worked; even the comparatively educated 
among them, in the sweat-shops, are undernour- 
ished and lack the physical well-being and con- 
sequent temperamental buoyancy which are 
comforting qualities of the well-bred American 
woman. Unhappy in circumstances, they are 
predominatingly serious in nature, and, if they 
lack alertness to the social nuance, have yet a 
compelling appeal which consists in headlong 

71 



devotion to a duty, a principle or a person. As 
their men do not treat them with the scrupulous 
deference given their American sisters, they do 
not so delightfully abound in their own sense, do 
not so complexedly work out their own natures, 
and lack variety and grace. On the other hand, 
they are more apt to abound in the sense of 
something outside of themselves, and carry to 
their love affairs the same devoted warmth that 
they put into principle. 

THE ORTHODOX JEWESS 
The first of the two well-marked classes of 
women in the Ghetto is that of the ignorant or- 
thodox Russian Jewess. She has no language 
but Yiddish, no learning but the Talmudic law, no 
practical authority but that of her husband and 
her rabbi. She is even more of a Hausfrau than 
the German wife. She can own no property, and 
the precepts of the Talmud as applied to her 
conduct are largely limited to the relations with 
her husband. Her life is absorbed in observing 
the religious law and in taking care of her 
numerous children. She is drab and plain in 
appearance, with a thick waist, a wig, and as far 
as is possible for a woman a contempt for orna- 
ment. She is, however, with the noticeable 
assimilative sensitiveness of the Jew, beginning 

72 



to pick up some of the ways of the American 
woman. If she is young when she comes to 
America, she soon lays aside her wig, and 
sometimes assumes the rakish American hat, 
prides herself on her bad English, and grows 




\ o^ 



HER LIFE IS ABSORBED IN OBSERVING THE 
RELIGIOUS LAW 

slack in the observance of Jewish holidays and 
the dietary regulations of the Talmud. Altho 
it is against the law of this religion to go to the 
theatre, large audiences, mainly drawn from the 

73 



ignorant workers of the sweat-shops and the 
fishwives and pedlers of the push-cart markets, 
flock to the Bowery houses. It is this class 
which forms the large background of the com- 
munity, the masses from which more cultivated 
types are developing. 

Many a literary sketch in the newspapers of 
the quarter portrays these ignorant, simple, 
devout, housewifely creatures in comic or pa- 
thetic, more often, after the satiric manner of 
the Jewish writers, in serio-comic vein. The 
authors, altho they are much more educated, yet 
write of these women, even when they write in 
comic fashion, with fundamental sympathy. 
They picture them working devotedly in the 
shop or at home for their husbands and families, 
they represent the sorrow and simple jealousy of 
the wife whose husband's imagination, perhaps, 
is carried away by the piquant manner and dress 
of a Jewess who is beginning to ape American 
ways ; they tell of the comic adventures in 
America of the newly-arrived Jewess : how she 
goes to the theatre, perhaps, and enacts the 
part of Partridge at the play. More fundamen- 
tally, they relate how the poor woman is deeply 
shocked, at her arrival, by the change which a 
few years have made in the character of her 
husband, who had come to America before her 

74 



in order to make a fortune. She finds his beard 
shaved off, and his manners in regard to reHg- 
ious holidays very slack. She is sometimes so 
deeply affected that she does not recover. More 
often she grows to feel the reason and eloquence 
of the change and becomes partly accustomed 
to the situation ; but all through her life she 
continues to be dismayed by the precocity, irre- 
ligion and Americanism of her children. Many 
sketches and many scenes in the Ghetto plays 
present her as a pathetic "greenhorn" who, 
while she is loved by her children, is yet rather 
patronized and pitied by them. 

In "Gott, Mensch und Teufel," a Yiddish 
adaptation of the Faust idea, one of these sim- 
ple religious souls is dramatically portrayed. 
The restless Jewish Faust, his soul corrupted 
by the love of money, puts aside his faithful wife 
in order to marry another woman who has 
pleased his eye. He uses as an excuse the fact 
that his marriage is childless, and as such ren- 
dered void in accordance with the precepts of 
the religious law. His poor old wife submits 
almost with reverence to the double authority 
of husband and Talmud, and with humble de- 
meanor and tears streaming from her eyes begs 
the privilege of taking care of the children of 
her successor. 

75 



In "The Slaughter" there is a scene which 
picturesquely portrays the love of the poor Jew 
and the poor Jewess for their children. The 
wife is married to a brute, whom she hates, and 
between the members of the two families there 
is no relation but that of ugly sordidness. But 
when it is known that a child is to be born they 
are all filled with the greatest joy. The husband 
is ecstatic and they have a great feast, drink, 
sing and dance, and the young wife is lyrically 
happy for the first time since her marriage. 

Many little newspaper sketches portray the 
simple sweat-shop Jewess of the ordinary affec- 
tionate type, who is exclusively minded so far as 
her husband's growing interest in the showy 
American Jewess is concerned. Cahan's novel, 
"Yekel," is the Ghetto masterpiece in the por- 
trayal of these two types of women — the wronged 
"greenhorn" who has just come from Russia, 
and she who, with a rakish hat and bad English, 
is becoming an American girl with strange 
power to alienate the husband's affections. 

THE MODERN TYPE 
The other, the educated class of Ghetto wo- 
men, is, of course, in a great minority; and this 
division includes the women even the most 
slightly affected by modern ideas as well as 

76 



those who from an intellectual point of view are 
highly cultivated. Among the least educated 
are a large number of women who would be 
entirely ignorant were it not for the ideas which 
they have received through the Socialistic prop- 
aganda of the quarter. Like the men who are 
otherwise ignorant, they are trained to a certain 
familiarity with economic ideas, read and think 
a good deal about labor and capital, and take an 
active part in speaking, in "house to house" 
distribution of socialistic literature and in strike 
agitation. Many of these women, so long as 
they are unmarried, lead lives thoroughly de- 
voted to "the cause," and afterwards become 
good wives and fruitful mothers, and urge on 
their husbands and sons to active work in the 
"movement." They have in personal character 
many virtues called masculine, are simple and 
straightforward and intensely serious, and do 
not "bank" in any way on the fact that they 
are women ! Such a woman would feel insulted 
if her escort were to pick up her handkerchief or 
in any way suggest a politeness growing out of 
the difference in sex. It is from this class of 
women, from those who are merely tinged, so to 
speak, with ideas, and who consequently are apt 
to throw the whole strength of their primitive 
natures into the narrow intellectual channels 

77 



that are open to them, that a number of Ghetto 
heroines come who are wilHng to lay down their 
Hves for an idea, or to Hve for one. It was only 
recently that the thinking Socialists were stirred 
by the suicide of a young girl for which several 
causes were given. Some say it was for love, but 
what seems a partial cause at least for the trag- 
edy was the girl's devotion to anarchistic ideas. 
She had worked for some time in the quarter 
and was filled with enthusiastic Tolstoian 
convictions about freedom and non-resistance 
to evil, and all the other idealistic doctrines for 
which these Anarchists are remark- 
able. Some of the people of the quarter 
believe that it was temporary despair 
of any satisfactory outcome to her work 
that brought about her death. But 
since the splits in the Socialistic party 
and the rise among them of many in- 
sincere agitators, the enthusiasm for 
the cause has diminished, and par- 
■ ticularly among the women, who 
demand perfect integrity or noth- 
ing; tho there is still a large class 
of poor sweat-shop women who 
carry on active propaganda 
work, make speeches, distrib- 
ute literature, and go from 
78 




INTENSELY SERIOUS 



house to house in a social effort to make converts. 
As we ascend in the scale of education in the 
Ghetto we find women who derive their culture 
and ideas from a double source — from Social- 
ism and from advanced Russian ideals of litera- 
ture and life. They have lost faith completely in 
the orthodox religion, have substituted no other, 
know Russian better than Yiddish, read Tol- 
stoi, Turgenef and Chekhov, and often put into 
practice the most radical theories of the "new 
woman," particularly those which say that wo- 
man should be economically independent of 
man. There are successful female dentists, 
physicians, writers, and even lawyers by the 
score in East Broadway who have attained 
financial independence through industry and 
intelligence. They are ambitious to a degree 
and often direct the careers of their husbands or 
force their lovers to become doctors or lawyers 
—the great social desiderata in the match- 
making of the Ghetto. There is more than one 
case on record where a girl has compelled her 
recalcitrant lover to learn law, medicine or den- 
tistry, or submit to being jilted by her. An 
actor devoted to the stage is now on the point 
of leaving it to become a dentist at the com- 
mand of his ambitious wife. " I always do what 
she tells me," he said pathetically. 

79 



The career of a certain woman now practising 
dentistry in the Ghetto is one of the most inter- 
esting cases, and is also quite typical. She was 
born of poor Jewish parents in a town near St. 
Petersburg, and began early to read the socialist 
propaganda and the Russian literature which 
contains so much implicit revolutionary doctrine. 
When she was seventeen years old she wrote 
a novel in Yiddish, called "Mrs. Goldna, the 
Usurer," in which she covertly advocated the 
anarchistic teachings. The title and the sub- 
theme of the book was directed against the 
usurer class among the Jews, and were mainly 
intended to hide from the Government her real 
purpose. The book was afterwards published in 
New York, and had a fairly wide circulation. A 
year or two later her imagination was irresisti- 
bly enthralled by the remarkable wave of "new 
woman " enthusiasm which swept over Russia 
in the early eighties, and resulted in so many 
suicides of young girls whom poverty or injustice 
to the Jew thwarted in their scientific and intel- 
lectual ambition. She went alone to St. Peters- 
burg with sixty five cents in her pocket, in order 
to obtain a professional education, which, after 
years of practical starvation, she succeeded in 
securing. With several degrees she came to 
America twelve years ago and fought out an 

80 



independent professional posi- 
tion for herself. She believes 
that all women should have the 
means by which they may sup- 
port themselves, and that mar- 
riage under these conditions 
would be happier than at pres- 
ent. Her husband is a doctor, 



and her idea is that they are f 



happier than if she were a woman 
of the old type, "merely a wife 
and mother," as she put it. She 
maintains that no emotional in- 
terest is lost under the new 
regime, while many practical ad- 
vantages are gained. Since she 
has been in America she has 




A RUSSIAN 
GIRL-STUDENT 



furthered the Socialist cause by 
literary sketches published in the Yiddish news- 
papers, altho she has been too busy to take any 
direct part in the movement. 

The description of this type of woman seems 
rather cold and forbidding in the telling ; but 
such an impression is misleading. There is no 
commoner reproach made by the women of the 
Ghetto against their American sister than that 
she is unemotional and "practical." They 
come to America, like the men, because they 

81 



cannot stand the political conditions in Russia, 
which they describe as "fierce," but they never 
cease loving the land of their birth ; and the 
reason they give is that the ideal still lives in 
Muscovite civilization, while in America it is 
trampled out by the cult of the dollar. They 
think Americans are dry and cold, unpoetic, un- 
interested in great principles, and essentially 
frivolous, incapable of devotion to persons or to 
"movements," reading books only for amuse- 
ment, and caring nothing for real literature. 
One day an American dined with four Russian 
Jews of distinction. Two were Nihilists who 
had been in the "big movement " in Russia and 
were merely visiting New York. The other two 
were a married couple of uncommon education. 
The Nihilists were gentle, cultivated men, with 
feeling for literature, and deeply admired, be- 
cause of their connection with the great move- 
ment, by the two New Yorkers. The talk 
turned on Byron, for whom the Russians had a 
warm enthusiasm. The Americans made rather 
light of Byron and incurred thereby the great 
scorn of the Russians, who felt deeply the 
" tendency " character of the poet without being 
able to understand his aesthetic and imaginative 
limitations. After the Nihilists had left, the mis- 
guided American used the words "interesting" 

8? 



and "amusing " in connection with them ; where- 
upon the Russian lady was almost indignant, 
and dilated on the frivolity of a race that could 
not take serious people seriously, but wanted 
always to be entertained ; that cared only for 
what was "pretty" and "charming" and "sen- 
sible" and "practical," and cared nothing for 
poetry and beauty and essential humanity. 

The woman referred to, as well as many others 
of the most educated class in the quarter, some 
of them the wives of socialists, doctors, lawyers or 
literary men, are strongly interesting because 
of their warm temperaments, and genuine, if 
limited, ideas about art, but most of them are 
lacking in grace, and sense of humor, and of pro- 
portion. They are stiff and unyielding, have little 
free play of imagination, little alertness of ideas, 
and their sense of literature is limited largely to 
realism. Japanese art, for instance, as any art 
which depends on the exquisiteness of its form, 
is lost on these stern realists. They no more 
understand the latest subtle literary conscious- 
ness than they do the interest and eloquence of 
a creature who makes of herself a perfect social 
product such as the clever French woman of 
history. 

But the charm of sincere feeling they have ; 
and, in an intellectual race, that feeling shapes 

83 




WORKING GIRLS RETURNING HOME 



itself into definite criticism of society. Emotion- 
ally strong and attached by Russian tradition to 
a rebellious doctrine, they are deeply unconven- 
tional in theory and sometimes in practice ; altho 
the national morality of the Jewish race very 
definitely limits the extent to which they realize 
some of their ideas. The passionate feeling at 
the bottom of most of their "tendency " beliefs is 
that woman should stand on the same social 
basis as man, and should be weighed in the 
same scales. This ruling creed is held by all 
classes of the educated women of the Ghetto, 
from the poor sweat shop worker, who has 
recently felt the influence of Socialism, to the 
thoroughly trained ** new woman " with her de- 
veloped literary taste ; and all its variations find 
expression in the literature of the quarter. 

PLACE OF WOMAN IN GHETTO 
LITERATURE 
Ibsen's "Doll's House" has been translated 
and produced at a Yiddish theatre ; and an 
original play called " Minna " registers a protest 
by the Jewish woman against that law of mar- 
riage which binds her to an inferior man. Mar- 
ried to an ignorant laborer, Minna falls in love (for 
his advanced ideas) with the boarder — every poor 
family, to pay the rent, must saddle themselves 

^5 



with a boarder, often at the expense of domestic 
happiness — and finally kills herself, when the 
laws of society press her too hard. Another 
drama called " East Broadway " presents the 
case of a Russian Jewess devoted to Russia, to 
idealism and Nihilism, and to a man who shared 
her faith until they came to New York, when he 
became a business man pure and simple, and 
lost his ideals and his love for her. In a popular 
play called "The Beggar of Odessa," lines 
openly advocating the freest love between the 
sexes accompany other extreme anarchistic 
views put into the loosest and most popular 
form. ** Broken Chains " is a drama which criti- 
cises the relative freedom of action given to the 
man in matters of love. The heroine reads 
Ibsen at night while her husband amuses himself 
in the quarter. A young bookkeeper is there 
who serves to make concrete her growing theo- 
ries. But her sense of duty to her child restrains 
her from the final step, and she dies in despair. 
Suicides in sketches and plays abound, and as 
often as not result simply from intellectual de- 
spondency. "Vain Sacrifice " is the fierce outcry 
of a woman against the poverty which makes her 
marry a man she loathes for the sake of her 
father. In the newspaper sketches there are 
many pictures of sordid homes and conditions 

86 



from the midst of which fierce protests by wives 
and mothers are implicitly given. 

An appealing characteristic of the "new 
woman " of the Ghetto is the consideration 
which she manifests towards the orthodox 
" greenhorn" who may be her aunt, her mother, 
her mother-in-law or her grandmother. The 
sense of infinite form prescribed by the Talmud 
is dead to her, but extraordinary love for the 
family bond is not, and, moved by that, she ob- 
serves the complicated formulae on all the holi- 
days in order to please the dear old " greenhorn " 
who lives with her; eats unleavened bread, 
weeps on Atonement Day in the synagogue, and 
goes through the whole long list. Her conduct 
in this respect is in striking contrast to the 
off-hand treatment of parents by their American 
daughters, and to that of the Orthodox Jewish 
woman in relation to the theatre. The law for- 
bids the theatre, but even the slightly disil- 
lusioned ladies of the quarter will go on the 
Sabbath ; and it is said that they sometimes 
hypocritically relieve their consciences by hissing 
the actor who, even in his role, dares to smoke 
on that day. This is on a par with the hypocrisy 
which leads many Orthodox Jewish families to 
have a Gentile as their servant, so that they 
can drink the tea, and warm themselves by 

87 




Ip^itEU^ 



the fire, made by him, without tech- 
nically violating "the law." 

Love in the Ghetto is, no doubt, very 
much the same as it is elsewhere ; and 
this in spite of the fact that among the 
I Orthodox marriage is arranged by the 
parents, a custom which is con- 
demned in "The Slaughter," for 
instance, where the terrible 
results of a loveless union are 
portrayed. The system of 
matrimonial agents in the 
quarter does not seem to have 
any important bearing on the 
question of love. In this re- 
spect the free thinking of the 
people grows apace, and love- 
marriages in the quarter are 
A RUSSIAN TYPE on the increase. In matters 
of taste and inclination between the sexes, 
however, there are some qualities quite start- 
ling Lo the American. The most popular actor 
with the girls of the Ghetto is a very fat, heavy, 
pompous hero who would provoke only a smile 
from the trim American girl ; and the more 
popular actresses are also very stout ladies. 
From an American point of view the prettiest 
actresses of the Ghetto are admired by the 

88 



^ 



minority of Jews who have been taken by the 
rakish hat, the slim form, and the indefinite 
charm to which the Ghetto is being educated. 
It is alleged that at an up-town theatre, where a 
large proportion of the audience is Jewish, the 
leading lady must always be of very generous 
build ; and this in spite of the fact that the well- 
to-do Jews up-town have been in America a long 
time, and have had ample opportunity to become 
smitten with the charms of the slender Ameri- 
can girl. 



89 



CKapter Four 



^* 

In East Canal Street, in the heart of the east 
side, are many of the little Russian Jewish cafes, 
already mentioned, where excellent coffee and 
tea are sold, where everything is clean and 
good, and where the conversation is often of the 
best. The talk is good, for there assemble, in 
the late afternoon and evening, the chosen 
crowd of "intellectuals." The best that is 
Russian to-day is intensely serious. What is 
distinctively Jewish has always been serious. 
The man hunted from his country is apt to have 
a serious tone in thought and feeling. 

It is this combination — Russian, Jewish, and 
exile — that is represented at these little Canal 
Street cafes. The sombre and earnest qualities 
of the race, emphasized by the special condi- 
tions, receive here expression in the mouths of 
actors, socialists, musicians, journalists, and 
poets. Here they get together and talk by the 
hour, over their coffee and cake, about politics 
and society, poetry and ethics, literature and 
life. The cafe-keepers themselves are thought- 

90 



ful and often join in the discussion, — a discussion 
never light but sometimes lighted up by bitter 
wit and gloomy irony. 

There are many poets among them, four of 
whom stand out as men of great talent. One of 
the four, Morris Rosenfeld, is already well known 
to the English-speaking world through a trans- 
lation of some of his poems. Two of the other 
three are equally well known, but only to the 
Jewish people. One is famous throughout Jew- 
ish Russia. 

A WEDDING BARD 

The oldest ofthe four poets is Eliakim Zunser. 
It is he that is known to millions of people in 
Russia and to the whole New York Ghetto. He 
is the poet ofthe common people, the beloved of 
all, the poet ofthe housewife, ofthe Jew who is 
so ignorant that he does not even know his own 
family name. To still more ignorant people, if 
such are possible, he is known by what, after all, 
is his distinctive title, Eliakim the Badchen, or 
the Wedding Bard. He writes in Yiddish, the 
universal language ofthe Jew, dubbed **jargon" 
by the Hebrew aristocrat. 

Zunser is now a printer in Rutger's Square, and 
has largely given up his duties as Badchen, but at 
one time he was so famous in that capacity that 

91 



he went to a wedding once or twice every day, 
and made in that way a large income. His part 
at the ceremony was to address the bride and 
bridegroom in verse so solemn that it would 
bring tears to their eyes, and then entertain the 
guests with burlesque lines. He composed the 
music as well as the verses, and did both extem- 
pore. When he left his home to attend the 
wedding there was no idea in his head as to 
what he would say. He left that to the result of 
a hurried talk before the ceremony with the 
wedding guests and the relatives of the couple. 
Zunser's wedding verses died as soon as they 
were born, but there are sixty-five collections of 
his poems, hundreds of which are 
sung every day to young and old 
throughout Russia. Many others 
have never been published, for 
Zunser is a poet who composes 
as he breathes, whose every feel- 
ing and idea quivers into poetic 
expression, and who preserves 
only an accidental part of what 
he does. 

He is a man of about seventy 

years of age, with kind little eyes, 

a gray beard, and spare, short 

figure. As he sits in his printing 

92 




ELIAKIM ZUNSER 



office in the far east side he wears a small black 
cap on his head. Adjoining the office is another 
room, in which he lives with nis wife and several 
children. The stove, the dining-table, the beds, 
are all in the same room, which is bare and chill. 
But the poet is hospitable, and to the guests he 
offered cake and a bottle of sarsaparilla. Far 
more delightful, however, the old man read some 
of his poems aloud. As he read in a chanting 
tone he swayed gently backwards and forwards, 
unconscious of his visitors, absorbed in the 
rhythm and feeling of the song. There was 
great sweetness and tenderness in his eyes, 
facility and spontaneity in the metre, and simple 
pathos and philosophy in the meaning of what 
he said. He was apparently not conscious of 
the possession of unusual power. Famous as 
he is, there was no sense of it in his bearing. 
He is absolutely of the people, childlike and 
simple. So far removed is he from the pride of 
his distinction that he has largely given up 
poetry now. 

"I don't write much any more," he said in his 
careless Yiddish; "I have not much time." 

His poetry seemed to him only a detail of his 
life. Along with the simplicity of old age he 
has the maturity and aloofness of it. The feel- 
ing for his position as an individual, if he ever 

93 



had it, has gone, and left the mind and heart 
interested only in God, race, and impersonal 
beauty. 

So as he chanted his poems he seemed to 
gather up into himself the dignity and pathos of 
his serious and suffering race, but as one who 
had gone beyond the suffering and lived only 
with the eternities. His wife and children bent 
over him as he recited, and their bodies kept 
time with his rhythm. One of the two visitors 
was a Jew, whose childhood had been spent in 
Russia, and when Zunser read a dirge which he 
had composed in Russia twenty-five years ago 
at the death by cholera of his first wife and chil- 
dren — a dirge which is now chanted daily in 
thousands of Jewish homes in Russia — the 
visitor joined in, altho he had not heard it for 
many years. Tears came to his eyes as mem- 
ories of his childhood were brought up by Zun- 
ser's famous lines; his body swayed to and fro in 
sympathy with that of Zunser and those of the 
poet's second wife and her children ; and to the 
Anglo-Saxon present this little group of Jewish 
exiles moved by rhythm, pathos, and the memory 
of a far-away land conveyed a strange emotion. 

Zunser's dirge is in a vein of reflective melan- 
choly. "The Mail Wagon" is its title. The 
mail wagon brings joy and sorrow, hope and 

94 



despair, and it was this awful mechanism that 
brought Zunser's grief home to him. " But 
earth, too, is a machine, a machine that crushes 
the bones of the philosopher into dust, digests 
them, that crushes and digests all things. From 
it all comes. Into it all goes. Why may I not 
therefore be chewing at this moment the mar- 
row of my children ? " 

Another song the old man read aloud was 
composed in his early childhood, and is repre- 
sentative in subject and mood of much of his 
later work. **The Song of the Bird" it is 
called, and it typifies the Jewish race. The 
bird's wing is broken, and the bird reflects in 
tender melancholy over his misfortunes. " Take 
me away from Roumania " has the same melan- 
choly, but also a humorous pathos in the title, 
for the poet meant he would like to be taken 
away from Russia, but was afraid to say so for 
political reasons. But the sadness of Zunser's 
poetry is lightened by its spontaneity and by the 
felicity of verse and music, and the naive idea in 
each poem is never too solemnly insisted upon 
for popular poetry. 

The dirge, which touched upon an episode of 
his life, led the poet to tell in his simple way the 
other events of a life history at once typical and 
peculiar. 

95 



He was born in Vilna, the capital of ancient 
Lithuania, and became apprentice to a weaver of 
gold lace at the age of six. His general educa- 
tion was consequently slight, tho he picked up a 
little of the Talmud and sang Isaiah and Jere- 
miah while at work. At the end of six years, 
when he was supposed to know his trade, his 
master was to give him twenty roubles as total 
wage. But the master refused to pay, and young 
Zunser took to the road with no money. He 
went to Bysk in the Ostsee province, and there 
worked at his trade during the day and at night 
studied the Talmud under the local rabbi. He 
also began to read books in pure Hebrew for the 
love of the noble poetry in that tongue. Before 
long he received word from home that his little 
brother had died. He went back and helped his 
mother cry, as he expressed it. Away he went 
again from home to a place called Bobroysk, 
where he obtained a position to teach Hebrew 
in the family of an innkeeper, who promised to 
pay him twenty-five roubles at the end of six 
months. When the time came his employer 
said he would pay at the end of the year. In- 
genuous Zunser agreed, but the innkeeper, just 
before the end of the year, went to a government 
official and reported that there was a boy at his 
house who was fit to be a soldier. Young Zun- 

96 



ser was pressed into the service. He was then 
thirteen. It was in the barracks that he com- 
posed his first three songs. In these songs he 
poured out his heart, told all his woe, but did 
not print them, "for," he said, "it was my own 
case." 

On being released from the service, Zunser 
went to Vilna and continued his trade as a gold- 
lace maker. He also wrote many poems and 
songs. They were not printed at first, but cir- 
culated in written copies. Zunser is said to be 
the first man to write songs in Yiddish, and 
soon he became famous. "It was 'the lace- 
maker boy' everywhere," as the poet expressed 
it. Now that he could make money by his songs 
he gave up his trade and devoted himself to art. 
In 1861 he returned to his native town a great 
man. There he first saw his work in print. 
Then came a period when he wrote a great 
deal and performed every day his function as wed- 
ding bard. For ten years things prospered with 
him, but in 1871 his wife and four children died 
of cholera. Zunser composed the famous dirge, 
left Vilna, which appeared to him unlucky, and 
went to Minsk. Here he continued to get a living 
with his pen, and married again. Ten years ago 
he came to New York with his family and kept 
up his occupation as wedding bard for some time. 

97 



The character of Zunser's poetry is what 
might be expected from his popularity, slight 
education, and humble position in the Jewish 
world. His melancholy is common to all Jewish 
poets. There is a constant reference to his 
race, too, a love for it, and a sort of humble 
pride. More than any of the four poets whom 
we are to mention, with the possible exception 
of Morris Rosenfeld, Zunser has a fresh lyric 
quality which has gone far to endear him to the 
people. Yet in spite of his sweet bird-like speed 
of expression, Zunser's is a poetry of ideas, altho 
the ideas are simple, fragmentary, and fanciful, 
and are seldom sustained beyond what is admis- 
sible to the lyric touch. The pale cast of 
thought, less marked in Zunser's work than in 
that of the other three poets, is also a common 
characteristic of Jewish poetry. Melancholy, 
patriotic, and thoughtful, what is lacking In 
Zunser is what all modern Jewish poetry lacks 
and what forms a sweet part of Anglo-Saxon 
literature — the distinctively sensuous element. 
A Keats is a Hebrew impossibility. The poetry 
of simple presentation, of the qualities of mere 
physical nature, is strikingly absent in the im- 
aginative work of this serious and moral people. 
The intellectual element is always noticeable, 
even in simple Zunser, the poet of the people. 

98 



A CHAMPION OF RACE 

A striking contrast to the popular wedding 
bard is Menahem Dolitzki, called the Hebrew 
poet because he has the distinction of writing in 
the old Hebrew language. 

His learning is limited to the old literature 
of his race. He is not a generally well educated 
man, not knowing or caring anything about 
modern life or ideas. The poet of the holy 
tongue, he is what the Jews call maskil, fellow of 
wisdom. The aloof dignity of his position fills 
him with a mild contempt for the "jargon," the 
Yiddish of Rosenfeld and Zunser, and makes 
him distrustful of what the fourth poet, Wald, 
represents — the modern socialistic spirit. 

Singularly enough, he is called by the socialists 
of the Ghetto the poet of the dilettanti. An An- 
glo-Saxon American employs the term to mean 
those persons superficially interested in much, 
deeply interested in nothing ; but these social- 
istic spirits stigmatize as dilettante whatever is 
not immersed in the spirit of the modern world. 
The man of form, the lover of the old, the cool 
man with scholastic tinge has no place in the 
sympathetic imagination of the Ghetto intellec- 
tuals. They leave him to the learned among old 








/ / 



fogies. And it is true that 
Dolitzki's appeal is a limited 
one, both as a man and as a 
poet. He is a handsome man 
of about forty-five years, with 
a fine profile, an unenthusiastic 
manner, a native reserve very 
evident in his way of reading 
his poetry. He has nothing of 
the buoyant spontaneity, the 
impersonal feeling of Zunser. 
The poet of the people was a 
part of his verse as he read. 
He threw himself into it, iden- 
tified himself with his musical 
and fanciful creation. But Dolitzki, who has been 
recently a travelling agent for a Yiddish news- 
paper on the east side, and has a little home 
suggesting greater cleanliness and comfort than 
that of Zunser, held his manuscript at arm's 
length and read his verses with no apparent sign 
of emotion. About his poetry and life he talked 
with comparative reserve, in the former evidently 
caring most for the form and the language, and 
in the latter for the ideas which determined his 
intellectual life rather than for picturesque de- 
tails and events. 

Dolitzki's life and work are identified with the 

lOO 



MENAHEM DOLITZKI 



revival of Hebrew literature of fifty years ago, 
and, more narrowly, of twenty years ago. He 
is one of the great poets of that revival, and 
wherever it is felt in the Jewish world, there 
Dolitzki is known and admired. He was born 
in Byelostock, but spent his early manhood in 
Moscow, whence he was expelled. That ev^ent 
partly determined the character of his first writ- 
ings — patriotic poems of culture, reasoned out- 
cries against the religious prejudice of the or- 
thodox Jews, the Jews who take their stand on 
the Talmud, led by the hair-splitting rabbi, up- 
holders of the narrow Jewish theology. Just as 
the revival of learning in Europe brought doubt 
of orthodoxy along with it, so the revival of the 
pure Hebrew literature brought doubt of the 
religion of the established rabbi, founded on a 
minute interpretation of the Talmud. The He- 
brew scholars who went back to the sources of 
Jewish literature for their inspiration were worse 
than infidels to the orthodox. And Dolitzki was 
the poet of these "infidels." 

When, however, the Jews were expelled from 
Moscow, Dolitzki's interest broadened to love 
of his race. It is not so much interest in human 
nature that these noble and austere poems 
manifest, as an epic love for the race as a whole, 
a lofty and abstract emotion. The intellectual 



and moral element characteristic of Jewish 
poetry is particularly marked in Dolitzki's work. 
His first poems, those of culture inspired by 
hatred of Talmudic prejudice, and his later 
ones, filled with the abstract love of his race, are 
poems of idealism expressed largely in compli- 
cated symbolical language, lacking, as compared 
with Zunser's poetry, spontaneity, wholly want- 
ing in sensuous imagery, but written in musical 
and finished verse. 

A poem illustrating Dolitzki's first period tells 
how a cherub bore the poet, symbolizing the 
Jewish people, aloft where he could see pure 
and beautiful things, but soon the earth ap- 
peared, in the shape of a round loaf of bread 
symbolizing need and poverty and prejudice; and 
to this the aspiring Jew must return and from 
this he could not escape. One of the poems 
in which Dolitzki's love of his race is expressed 
describes a man and a maiden (the Jewish race) 
who, driven by love of one another and fear of 
oppression, are sitting upon a lofty rock. Below 
them on the plain they see their family murdered 
by the invaders. Then they voluntarily die, de- 
claring that they will yet live forever in the race. 

Dolitzki's remote idealism represents a nobler 
kind of thing than what is generally associated 
with the east side. A dignified and epic poet, 



he is filled with moral rather than enthusiastic 
love of the old language and the old race. 

A SINGER OF LABOR 

Morris Rosenfeld, poet and former tailor, 
strikes in his personality and writings the weary- 
minor. Full of tears are the man and his song. 
Zunser, Dolitzki, and Wald, altho in their verse 
runs the eternal melancholy of poetry and of the 
Jews, have yet physical buoyancy and a robust 
spirit. But Rosenfeld, small, dark, and fragile 
in body, with fine eyes and drooping eyelashes, 
and a plaintive, childlike voice, is weary and sick 
^a simple poet, a sensitive child, a bearer of 
burdens, an east side tailor. Zunser and Do- 
litzki have shown themselves able to cope with 
their hard conditions, but the sad little Rosen- 
feld, unpractical and incapable in all but his 
songs, has had the hardest time of all. His life 
has been typical of that of many a delicate poet 
— a life of privation, of struggle borne by weak 
shoulders, and a spirit and temperament not 
fitted to meet the world. 

Much younger than Zunser or Dolitzki, Mor- 
ris Rosenfeld was born thirty-eight years ago 
in a small village in the province of Subalk, in 
Russian Poland, at the end of the last Polish 

103 



revolution. The very night he was born the 
world began to oppress him, for insurgents 
threw rocks through the window. His grand- 
father was rich, but his father lost the money in 
business, and Morris received very little educa- 
tion — only the Talmud and a little German, 




MORRIS ROSENFELD 



which he got at a school in Warsaw, He 
married when he was sixteen, "because my 
father told me to," as the poet expressed it. 
He ran away from Poland to avoid being pressed 
into the army. "I would like to serve my coun- 

104 



try," he said, "if there had been any freedom for 
the Jew." Then he went to Holland and learned 
the trade of diamond-cutting; then to London, 
where he took up tailoring. 

Hearing that the tailors had won a strike in 
America, he came to New York, thinking he 
would need to work here only ten hours a day. 
"But what I heard," he said, "was a lie. I 
found the sweat-shops in New York just as bad 
as they were in London." 

In those places he worked for many years, 
worked away his health and strength, but at the 
same time composed many a sweetly sad song. 
"I worked in the sweat-shop in the daytime," he 
said to me, "and at night I worked at my poems. 
I could not help writing them. My heart was 
full of bitterness. If my poems are sad and 
plaintive, it is because I expressed my own feel- 
ings, and because my surroundings were sad." 

Next to Zunser, Rosenfeld is the most popular 
of the four Jewish poets. Zunser is most pop- 
ular in Russia, Rosenfeld in this country. Both 
write in the universal Yiddish or "jargon," both 
are simple and spontaneous, musical and un- 
tutored. But, unlike Zunser, Rosenfeld is a 
thorough representative, one might say victim, 
of the modern spirit. Zunser sings to an older 
and more buoyant Jewish world, to the Russian 



Hebrew village and the country at large. 
Rosenfeld in weary accents sings to the maimed 
spirit of the Jewish slums. It is a fresh, naive 
note, the pathetic cry of the bright spirit crushed 
in the poisonous air of the Ghetto. The first 
song that Rosenfeld printed in English is this : 

" I lift mine eyes against the sky, 
The clouds are weeping, so am I ; 
I lift mine eyes again on high, 
The sun is smiling, so am I. 
Why do I smile ? Why do I weep ? 
I do not know ; it lies too deep. 

"I hear the winds of autumn sigh, 
They break my heart, they make me cry ; 
I hear the birds of lovely spring. 
My hopes revive, I help them sing. 
Why do I sing ? Why do I cry ? 
It lies so deep, I know not why." 



A DREAMER OF BROTHERHOOD 

Abraham Wald, whose nom de plume is Lessin, 
is only twenty-eight years old, the youngest and 
least known of the four poets, yet in some re- 
spects the most interesting. He is the only one 
who is on a level with the intellectual alertness 
of the day. His education is broad and in some 
directions thorough. He is the only one of the 
four poets whom we are discussing who knows 

io6 



Russian, which language he often writes. He is 
an imaginative critic, a violent socialist, and an 
excitable lover of nature. 

One of his friends called the poet on one occa- 
sion an intellectual dehauche. It was in a Canal 
Street cafe, where Wald was talking in an ex- 
cited tone to several other intellectuals. He is 
a short, stocky man, with a suggestion of physi- 
cal power. His eyes are brilliant, and there 
seems to be going on in him a sort of intellectual 
consumption. He is restlessly intense in man- 
ner, speaks in images, and is always passionately 
convinced of the truth of what he sees so clearly 
but seldom expresses in cold logic. His fevered 
idealism meets you in his frank, quick gaze and 
impulsive and rapid speech. 

Lacking in repose, balance, and sobriety of 
thought, Wald is well described by his friend's 
phrase. Equally well he may be called the 
Jewish bohemian. He is not dissipated in the 
ordinary sense. Coffee and tea are the drinks he 
finds in his little cafes. But in these places he 
practically lives, disputing, arguing, expound- 
ing, with whomsoever he may find. He has no 
fixed home, but sleeps wherever inevitable 
weariness finds him. He prefers to sleep not at 
all. Like all his talented tribe he is poor, and 
makes an occasional dollar by writing a poem or 

107 




Zp^aMv 



ABRAHAM WALD 



an article for an east side newspaper. When 
he has collected three or four dollars he quits 
the newspaper office and seeks again his be- 
loved cafe, violently to impart his quick-coming 
thoughts and impulses. Only after his money is 
gone — and it lasts him many days — does he re- 
turn to his work on the paper, the editor of 
which must be an uncommonly good-natured 
fellow. 

Impelled by political reasons, Wald left Russia 
three years ago, but before that time, which was 
in his twenty-fifth year, he had passed through 
eight mental and moral crises. Perhaps the 
number was a poetical exaggeration, for when I 
asked the poet to enumerate he gave only five. 
As a boy he revolted from the hair-splitting 
Talmudic orthodoxy, and was cursed in conse- 
quence ; then he lost his Jewish faith altogether; 
then his whole Cultur-Anschauung changed, on 
account of the influence of Russian literature. 
He became an atheist and then a socialist and 
perhaps a pantheist : at least he has written 
poems in which breathes the personified spirit 
of nature. Without the peace of nature, how- 
ever, is the man and his work. He dislikes 
America because it lacks the ebullient activity 
of moral, imaginative life. Wald likes Russia 
better than America because Russia, to use the 

109 



poet's words, is idealism, hope, and America is 
realization. 

"Before I came to America," he said, "I 
thought it would not be as interesting as Rus- 
sia, and when I got here I saw that I was right. 
America seemed all worked out to me, as if 
mighty things had already been done, but it 
seemed lifeless at the core. Russia, on the 
other hand, with no external form of national 
prosperity, is all activity at heart, restless long- 
ing. Russia is nothing to see, but alive and 
bubbling at the core. The American wants a 
legal wife, something there and sure, but the 
Russian wants a wife behind a mountain, through 
which he cannot penetrate, but can only dream 
and strive for her." 

These four poets have what is distinctive of 
Jewish poetry — the pulse of desire and hope, in 
which there is strain and reproach, constant 
effort. The Russian Jew's lack of appreciation 
of completed beauty or of merely sensuous na- 
ture is strikingly illustrated by the fact that 
there has never been a great expression of 
plastic art in his history. Painting, sculpture, 
and architecture are nothing to the Jew in 
comparison with the literature and music of 
ideas. In nearly all the Jews of talent I have 
met there is the same intellectual consumption, 

no 



the excitement of beauty, but no enjoyment of 
pure beauty of form. The race is still too un- 
happy, too unsatisfied, has too much to gain, to 
express a complacent sense of the beauty of 
what is. 

Wald's is the poetry of socialism and of na- 
ture, and one form is as turbulent as the other. 
He writes, for instance, of the prisoner in 
Siberia, his verses filled with passionate rebel- 
lion. Then he tells how he dreamed beside the 
gleaming river, and of the fancies that passed 
through his brain — net merely pretty fancies, but 
passionately moral images in which rebellion, 
longing, wonder, are by turns expressed; never 
peaceful enjoyment of nature, never simply the 
humble eye that sees and questions not, but 
always the moral storm and stress. 

Wald and Rosenfeld represent at once things 
similar and unlike. Both are associated with the 
modern spirit of socialism, both are identified 
with the heart of big cities, both are very civil- 
ized, yet in temperament and quality no two poets 
could be more widely separated. Rosenfeld is the 
finer spirit, the more narrow, too. He is eminently 
the Ghetto Jew. But Wald, as one sees him 
talking in the cafe, his whole body alive with 
emotion, with his youthful, open face, his con- 
stant energy, and the modernity and freshness 



of his ideas, seems the Russian rather than the 
Jew, and suggests the vivid spirit of Tolstoi. 

In comparison with Wald and Rosenfeld the 
older men, Dolitzki and Zunser, seem remote. 
Dolitzki has the remoteness of culture and 
Zunser that of old age and relative peace of 
spirit. But compared among themselves the 
poets of the four are Zunser and Rosenfeld, the 
spontaneous lyric singers. Wald, however, is 
making his way rapidly into the sympathetic in- 
telligence of the socialists — a growing class — but 
has not as yet the same wide appeal as the two 
poets who sing only in the tongue of the people. 



112 



Cha-pter Five 



*^ 

THEATRES, ACTORS AND AUDIENCE 

In the three Yiddish theatres on the Bowery 
is expressed the world of the Ghetto — that New 
York City of Russian Jews, large, complex, with 
a full life and civilization. In the midst of the 
frivolous Bowery, devoted to tinsel variety 
shows, "dive" music-halls, fake museums, triv- 
ial amusement booths of all sorts, cheap lodg- 
ing-houses, ten-cent shops and Irish-American 
tough saloons, the theatres of the chosen people 
alone present the serious as well as the trivial in- 
terests of an entire community. Into these three 
buildings crowd the Jews of all the Ghetto classes 
— the sweat-shop woman with her baby, the day- 
laborer, the small Hester Street shopkeeper, 
the Russian-Jewish anarchist and socialist, the 
Ghetto rabbi and scholar, the poet, the journal- 
ist. The poor and ignorant are in the great 
majority, but the learned, the intellectual and 
the progressive are also represented, and here, 
as elsewhere, exert a more than numerically 



proportionate influence on the character of the 
theatrical productions, which, nevertheless, re- 
main essentially popular. The socialists and 
the literati create the demand that forces into 
the mass of vaudeville, light opera, historical 
and melodramatic plays a more serious art ele- 
ment, a simple transcript from life or the theatric 
presentation of a Ghetto problem. But this more 
serious element is so saturated with the simple 
manners, humor and pathos of the life of the 
poor Jew, that it is seldom above the heartfelt 
understanding of the crowd. 

The audiences vary in character from night to 
night rather more than in an up-town theatre. 
On the evenings of the first four week-days the 
theatre is let to a guild or club, many hundred 
of which exist among the working people of the 
east side. Many are labor organizations repre- 
senting the different trades, many are purely 
social, and others are in the nature of secret 
societies. Some of these clubs are formed on 
the basis of a common home in Russia. The 
people, for instance, who came from Vilna, a 
city in the old country, have organized a Vilna 
Club in the Ghetto. Then, too, the anarchists 
have a society ; there are many socialistic or- 
ders ; the newspapers of the Ghetto have their 
constituency, which sometimes hires the theatre. 

114 



Two or three hundred dollars is paid to the 
theatre by the guild, which then sells the tickets 
among the faithful for a good price. Every 
member of the society is forced to buy, whether 
he wants to see the play or not, and the money 
made over and above the expenses of hiring the 
theatre is for the benefit of the guild. These 
performances are therefore called "benefits." 
The widespread existence of such a custom is a 
striking indication of the growing sense of cor- 
porate interests among the laboring classes of 
the Jewish east side. It is an expression of the 
socialistic spirit which is marked everywhere in 
the Ghetto. 

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights the 
theatre is not let, for these are the Jewish holi- 
days, and the house is always completely sold 
out, altho prices range from twenty-five cents to 
a dollar. Friday night is, properly speaking, the 
gala occasion of the week. That is the legiti- 
mate Jewish holiday, the night before the Sab- 
bath. Orthodox Jews, as well as others, may 
then amuse themselves. Saturday, altho the 
day of worship, is also of holiday character in 
the Ghetto. This is due to the Christian influ- 
ences, to which the Jews are more and more 
sensitive. Through economic necessity Jewish 
workingmen are compelled to work on Saturday, 

"5 



and, like other workingmen, look upon Saturday 
night as a holiday, in spite of the frown of the 
orthodox. Into Sunday, too, they extend their 
freedom, and so in the Ghetto there are now 
three popularly recognized nights on which to 
go with all the world to the theatre. 

On those nights the theatre presents a pecu- 
liarly picturesque sight. Poor workingmen and 
women with their babies of all ages fill the 
theatre. Great enthusiasm is manifested, sin- 
cere laughter and tears accompany the sincere 
acting on the stage. Pedlars of soda-water, 
candy, of fantastic gewgaws of many kinds, mix 
freely with the audience between the acts. 
Conversation during the play is received with 
strenuous hisses, but the falling of the curtain is 
the signal for groups of friends to get together 
and gossip about the play or the affairs of the 
week. Introductions are not necessary, and the 
Yiddish community can then be seen and ap- 
proached with great freedom. On the stage 
curtain are advertisements of the wares of Hes- 
ter Street or portraits of the "star " actors. On 
the programmes and circulars distributed in the 
audience are sometimes amusing announcements 
of coming attractions or lyric praise of the 
"stars." Poetry is not infrequent, an example 
of which, literally translated, is : 

ii6 



Labor, ye stars, as ye will. 

Ye cannot equal the artist ; 

In the garden of art ye shall not flourish ; 

Ye can never achieve his fame. 

Can you play Hamlet like him ? 

The Wild King, or the Huguenots? 

Are you gifted with feeling 

So much as to imitate him like a shadow ? 

Your fame rests on the pen ; 

On the show-cards your flight is high ; 

But on the stage every one can see 

How your greatness turns to ashes, 

Tomashevsky ! Artist great ! 

No praise is good enough for you ; 

Every one remains your ardent friend. 

Of all the stars you remain the king. 

You seek no tricks, no false quibbles ; 

One sees Truth itself playing. 

Your appearance is godly to us ; 

Every movement is full of grace ; 

Pleasing is your every gesture ; 

Sugar-sweet your every turn ; 

You remain the King of the Stage ; 

Everything falls to your feet. 

On the playboards outside the theatre, con- 
taining usually the portrait of a star, are also 
lyric and enthusiastic announcements. Thus, 
on the return of the great Adler, who had been 
ill, it was announced on the boards that "the 
splendid eagle has spread his wings again." 
/■ The Yiddish actors, as may be inferred from 
the verses quoted, take themselves with peculiar 
seriousness, justified by the enthusiasm, almost 
worship, with which they are regarded by the 

117 



people. Many a poor Jew, man or girl, who 
makes no more than $io a week in the sweat- 
shop, will spend $5 of it on the theatre, which is 
practically the only amusement of the Ghetto 
Jew. He has not the loafing and sporting in- 
stincts of the poor Christian, and spends his 
money for the theatre rather than for drink. It 
is not only to see the play that the poor Jew 
goes to the theatre. It is to see his friends and 
the actors. With these latter he, and more 
frequently she, try in every way to make ac- 
quaintance, but commonly are compelled to 
adore at a distance. They love the songs that 
are heard on the stage, and for these the de- 
mand is so great that a certain bookshop on the 
east side makes a specialty of publishing them. 
The actor responds to this popular enthusiasm 
with sovereign contempt. He struts about in 
the cafes on Canal and Grand Streets, conscious 
of his greatness. He refers to the crowd as 
"Moses" with superior condescension or hu- 
morous vituperation. Like thieves, the actors 
have a jargon of their own, which is esoteric 
and jealously guarded. Their pride gave rise a 
year or two ago to an amusing strike at the 
People's Theatre. The actors of the three 
Yiddish companies in New York are normally 
paid on the share rather than the salary sys- 

118 



tern. In the case of the company now at the 
People's Theatre, this system proved very prof- 
itable. The star actors, Jacob Adler and Boris 
Thomashevsky, and their wives, who are ac- 
tresses — Mrs. Adler being the heavy realistic 
tragedienne and Mrs. Thomashevsky the star 
soubrette — have probably received on an average 
during that time as much as $125 a week for 
each couple. But they, with Mr. Edelstein, the 
business man, are lessees of the theatre, run the 
risk and pay the expenses, which are not small. 
The rent of the theatre is $20,000 a year, and 
the weekly expenses, besides, amount to about 
$1,100. The subordinate actors, who risk noth- 
ing, since they do not share the expenses, 
have made amounts during this favorable period 
ranging from $14 a week on the average for the 
poorest actors to $75 for those just beneath the 
"stars." But, in spite of what is exceedingly 
good pay in the Bowery, the actors of this 
theatre formed a union, and struck for wages 
instead of shares. This however, was only an 
incidental feature. The real cause was that the 
management of the theatre, with the energetic 
Thomashevsky at the head, insisted that the 
actors should be prompt at rehearsals, and if 
they were not, indulged in unseemly epithets. 
The actors' pride was aroused, and the union 

119 



was formed to insure their ease and dignity and 
to protect them from harsh words. The man- 
agement imported actors from Chicago. Several 
of the actors here stood by their employers, 
notably Miss Weinblatt, a popular young in- 
genue, who, on account of her great memory is 
called the "Yiddish Encyclopedia," and Miss 
Gudinski, an actress of commanding presence. 
Miss Weinblatt forced her father, once an actor, 
now a farmer, into the service of the management. 
But the actors easily triumphed. Misses Gudin- 
ski and Weinblatt were forced to join the union, 
Mr. Weinblatt returned to his farm, the "scabs " 
were packed off to Philadelphia, and the wages 
system introduced. A delegation was sent to 
Philadelphia to throw cabbages at the new ac- 
tors, who appeared in the Yiddish performances 
in that city. The triumphant actors now receive 
on the average probably $io to $15 a week less 
than under the old system. Mr. Conrad, who 
began the disaffection, receives a salary of $29 a 
week, fully $10 less than he received for months 
before the strike. But the dignity of the Yid- 
dish actor is now placed beyond assault. As 
one of them recently said : "We shall no longer 
be spat upon nor called * dog.' " 

The Yiddish actor is so supreme that until 
recently a regular system of hazing playwrights 

120 



was in vogue. Joseph Latteiner and Professor 
M. Horowitz were long recognized as the only 
legitimate Ghetto playwrights. When a new 
writer came to the theatre with a manuscript, 
various were the pranks the actors would play. 
They would induce him to try, one after another, 
all the costumes in the house, in order to help 
him conceive the characters ; or they would 
make him spout the play from the middle of the 
stage, they themselves retiring to the gallery to 
"see how it sounded." In the midst of his exer- 
tions they would slip away, and he would find 
himself shouting to the empty boards. Or, in 
the midst of a mock rehearsal, some actor would 
shout, "He is coming, the great Professor 
Horowitz, and he will eat you " ; and they would 
rush from the theatre with the panic-stricken 
playwright following close at their heels. 

The supremacy of the Yiddish actor has, how- 
ever, its humorous limitations. The orthodox 
Jews who go to the theatre on Friday night, the 
beginning of Sabbath, are commonly somewhat 
ashamed of themselves and try to quiet their 
consciences by a vociferous condemnation of the 
actions on the stage. The actor, who through 
the exigencies of his role, is compelled to appear 
on Friday night with a cigar in his mouth, is 
frequently greeted with hisses and strenuous 




cries of "Shame, shame, 
smoke on the Sabbath!" 
from the proletarian hypo- 
crites in the gallery. 
. The plays at these the- 
tres vary in a general way 
with the varying audiences 
of which I have spoken 
above. The thinking so- 
cialists naturally select a 
less violent play than the 
comparatively illogical an- 
archists. Societies of rela- 
tively conservative Jews 
desire a historical play in 
which the religious He- 
brew in relation to the per- 
secuting Christian is put in pathetic and melodra- 
matic situations. There are a very large number 
of ** culture" pieces produced, which, roughly 
speaking, are plays in which the difference be- 
tween the Jew of one generation and the next is 
dramatically portrayed. The pathos or tragedy 
involved in differences of faith and "point of 
view" between the old rabbi and his more 
enlightened children is expressed in many his- 
torical plays of the general character of JJrieL 
Acosta, tho in less lasting form. Such plays, 



MR. MOSHKOVITZ 



however, are called "historical plunder" by that 
very up-to-date element of the intellectual Ghetto 
which is dominated by the Russian spirit of 
realism. It is the demand of these fierce real- 
ists that of late years has produced a supply of 
theatrical productions attempting to present a 
faithful picture of the actual conditions of life. 
Permeating all these kinds of plays is the 
amusement instinct pure and simple. For the 
benefit of the crowd of ignorant people gro- 
tesque humor, popular songs, vaudeville tricks, 
are inserted everywhere. 

' Of these plays the realistic are of the most 
value,* for they often give the actual Ghetto life 
with surprising strength and fidelity. The past 
three years have been their great seasons, and 
have developed a large crop of new playwrights, 
mainly journalists who write miscellaneous arti- 
cles for the east side newspapers. Jacob Gor- 
din, of whom we shall have frequent occasion to 
speak, has been writing plays for several years, 
and was the first realistic playwright; he remains 
the strongest and most prominent in this kind of 
play. Professor Horowitz, who is now the lessee 
of the Windsor Theatre, situated on the Bowery, 
between Grand and Canal Streets, represents, 
along with Joseph Latteiner, the conservative 

*See text , section on "Realism." 
i23 



and traditional aspects of the stage. He is an 
interesting man, fifty-six years of age, and has 
been connected with the Yiddish stage practi- 
cally since its origin. His father was a teacher 
in a Hebrew school, and he himself is a man of 
uncommon learning. He has made a great 
study of the stage, has written one hundred and 
sixty-seven plays, and claims to be an authority 
on dramaturgie. Latteiner is equally productive, 
but few of their plays are anything more than 
Yiddish adaptations of old operas and melo- 
dramas in other languages. Long runs are 
impossible on the Yiddish stage and conse- 
quently the playwrights produce many plays and 
are not very scrupulous in their methods. The 
absence of dramatic criticism and the ignorance 
of the audience enable them to "crib " with im- 
punity. As one of the actors said, Latteiner 
and Horowitz and their class took their first 
plays from some foreign source and since then 
have been repeating themselves. The actor 
said that when he is cast in a Latteiner play he 
does not need to learn his part. He needs only 
to understand the general situation ; the char- 
acter and the words he already knows from 
having appeared in many other Latteiner plays. 
The professor, nevertheless, naturally regards 
himself and Latteiner as the "real" Yiddish 

124 



playwrights. For many years after the first 
bands of actors reached the New York Ghetto 
these two men held undisputed sway. Latteiner 
leaned to "romantic," Horowitz to "culture," 
plays, and both used material which was mainly 
historical. The professor regards that as the 
bright period of the Ghetco stage. Since then 
there has been, in his opinion, a decadence 
which began with the translation of the classics 
into Yiddish. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and plays 
of Schiller, were put upon the stage and are still 
being performed. Sometimes they are almost 
literally translated, sometimes adapted until 
they are realistic representations of Jewish life. 
Gordin's Yiddish King Lear, for instance, repre- 
sents Shakespeare's idea only in the most 
general way, and weaves about it a sordid story 
of Jewish character and life. Of Hamlet there 
are two versions, one adapted, in which Shake- 
speare's idea is reduced to a ludicrous shadow, 
the interest lying entirely in the presentation of 
Jewish customs. ) 

The first act of the Yiddish version represents 
the wedding feast of Hamlet's mother and uncle. 
In the Yiddish play the uncle is a rabbi in a small 
village in Russia. He did not poison Hamlet's 
father but broke the latter's heart by wooing 
and winning his queen. Hamlet is off some- 

126 



where getting educated as a rabbi. While he is 
gone his father dies. Six weeks afterwards the 
son returns in the midst of the wedding feast, 
and turns the feast into a funeral. Scenes of 
rant follow between mother and son, Ophelia 
and Hamlet, interspersed with jokes and sneers 
at the sect of rabbis who think they communi- 
cate with the angels. The wicked rabbi con- 
spires against Hamlet, trying to make him out a 
nihilist. The plot is discovered and the wicked 
rabbi is sent to Siberia. The last act is the grave- 
yard scene. It is snowing violently. The grave 
is near a huge windmill. Ophelia is brought in 
on the bier. Hamlet mourns by her side and is 
married, according to the Jewish custom, to the 
dead woman. Then he dies of a broken heart. 
The other version is almost a literal translation. 
To these translations of the classics, Professor 
Horowitz objects on the ground that the igno- 
rant Yiddish public cannot understand them, 
because what learning they have is limited to 
distinctively Yiddish subjects and traditions. 

Another important step in what the professor 
calls the degeneration of the stage was the 
introduction a few years ago of the American 
"pistol" play — meaning the fierce melodrama 
which has been for so long a characteristic of 
the English plays produced on the Bowery. ) 

127 



But what has contributed more than anything 
else to what the good man calls the, present 
deplorable condition of the theatre was the 
advent of realism. " It was then," said the 
professor one day with calm indignation, ** that 
the genuine Yiddish play was persecuted. 
Young writers came from Russia and swamped 
the Ghetto with scurrilous attacks on me and 
Latteiner. No number of the newspaper ap- 
peared that did not contain a scathing criticism. 
They did not object to the actors, who in reality 
were very bad, but it was the play they aimed 
at. These writers knew nothing about drama- 
turgie, but their heads were filled with senseless 
realism. Anything historical and distinctively 
Yiddish they thought bad. For a long time 
Latteiner and I were able to keep their realistic 
plays off the boards, but for the last few years 
there has been an open field for everybody. The 
result is that horrors under the mask of realism 
have been put upon the stage. This year is the 
worst of all — characters butchered on the stage, 
the coarsest language, the most revolting situa- 
tions, without ideas, with no real material. It 
cannot last, however. Latteiner and I continue 
with our real Yiddish plays, and we shall yet 
regain entire possession of the field." 

At least this much may fairly be conceded to 
128 



Professor Horowitz — that the realistic writers 
in what is in reality an excellent attempt often 
go to excess, and are often unskilful as far as 
stage construction is concerned. In the reaction 
from plays with "pleasant" endings, they tend 
to prefer equally unreal "unpleasant" endings, 
"onion" plays, as the opponents of the realists 
call them. They, however, have written a num- 
ber of plays which are distinctively of the New 
York Ghetto, and which attempt an unsenti- 
mental presentation of truth. A rather extended 
description of these plays is given in the next 
section. Professor Horowitz's plays, on the con- 
trary, are largely based upon the sentimental 
representation of inexact Jewish history. They 
herald the glory and wrongs of the Hebrew peo- 
ple, and are badly constructed melodramas of 
conventional character. Another class of plays 
written by Professor Horowitz, and which have 
occasionally great but temporary prosperity, are 
what he calls Zeitstucke, Some American news- 
paper sensation is rapidly dramatized and put 
hot on the boards, such as Marie Barberi, Dr, Bu- 
chanan and Dr, Harris, 

The three theatres — the People's, the Wind- 
sor and the Thalia, which is on the Bowery 
opposite the Windsor — are in a general way 
very similar in the character of the plays pro- 

1 29 



duced, in the standard of acting and in the char- 
acter of the audience. There are, however, some 
minor differences. The People's is the "swell- 
est " and probably the least characteristic of the 
three. It panders to the "uptown" element of 
the Ghetto, to the downtown tradesman who is 
beginning to climb a little. The baleful influence 
in art of the nowveaux riches has at this house its 
Ghetto expression. There is a tendency there 
to imitate the showy qualities of the Broadway 
theatres— melodrama, farce, scenery, etc. No ba- 
bies are admitted, and the house is exceedingly 
clean in comparison with the theatres farther 
down the Bowery. Three years ago this com- 
pany were at the Windsor Theatre, and made 
so much money that they hired the People's, that 
old home of Irish-American melodrama, and this 
atmosphere seems slightly to have affected the 
Yiddish productions. Magnificent performances 
quite out of the line of the best Ghetto drama 
have been attempted, notably Yiddish dramati- 
zations of successful up-town productions. 
Hauptman's Versunkene Glocke, Sapho, Quo Vadis, 
and other popular Broadway plays in flimsy 
adaptations were tried with little success, as the 
Yiddish audiences hardly felt themselves at 
home in these unfamiliar scenes and settings. 
The best trained of the three companies is at 
130 



present that of the Thalia Theatre. Here many 
excellent realistic plays are given. Of late 
years, the great playwright of the colony, Jacob 
Gordin, has written mainly for this theatre. 
There, too, is the best of the younger actresses, 
Mrs. Bertha Kalisch. She is the prettiest 
woman on the Ghetto stage and was at one 
time the leading lady of the Imperial Theatre at 
Bucharest. She takes the leading woman parts 
in plays like Fedora, Magda. and The Jeiutsh Zaza, 
The principal actor at this theatre is David 
Kessler, who is one of the best of the Ghetto 
actors in realistic parts, and one of the worst 
when cast, as he often is, as the romantic lover. 
The actor of most prominence among the young- 
er men is Mr. Moshkovitch, who hopes to be a 
"star" and one of the management. When the 
union was formed he was in a quandary. Should 
he join or should he not ? He feared it might be 
a bad precedent, which the actors would use 
against him when he became a star. And yet 
he did not want to get them down on him. So 
before he joined he entered solemn protests at 
all the cafes on Canal Street. The strike, he 
maintained, was unnecessary. The actors were 
well paid and well treated. Discipline should be 
maintained. But he would join because of his 
universal sympathy with actors and with the 

131 




if^^VUr 



DAVID KESSLER 



poor — as a matter of sentiment merely, against 
his better judgment. 

The company at the Windsor is the weakest, 
so far as acting is concerned, of the three. Very 
few "realistic" plays are given there, for Pro- 
fessor Horowitz is the lessee, and he prefers the 
historical Jewish opera and "culture" plays. 
Besides, the company is not strong enough to 
undertake successfully many new productions, 
altho it includes some good actors. Here Mrs. 
Prager vies as a prima-donna with Mrs. Karb of 
the People's and Mrs. Kalisch of the Thalia. 
Professor Horowitz thinks she is far better than 
the other two. As he puts it, there are two and 
a half prima-donnas in the Ghetto — at the Wind- 
sor Theatre there is a complete one, leaving 
one and a half between the People's and the 
Thalia. Jacob Adler of the People's, the profes- 
sor thinks, is no actor, only a remarkable carica- 
turist. As Adler is the most noteworthy repre- 
sentative of the realistic actors of the Ghetto, 
the professor's opinion shows what the tradi- 
tional Yiddish playwright thinks of realism. The 
strong realistic playwright, Jacob Gordin, the 
professor admits, has a "biting" dialogue, and 
"unconsciously writes good cultural plays which 
he calls realistic, but his realistic plays, properly 
speaking, are bad caricatures of life." 

^33 



The managers and actors of the three theatres 
criticise one another indeed with charming di- 
rectness, and they all have their followers in the 
Ghetto and their special cafes on Grand or Canal 
Streets, where their particular prejudices are sym- 
pathetically expressed. The actors and lessees 
of the People's are proud of their fine theatre, 
proud that no babies are brought there. There 
is a great dispute between the supporters of this 
theatre and those of the Thalia as to which is 
the stronger company and which produces the 
most realistic plays. The manager of the Thalia 
maintains that the People's is sensational, and 
that his theatre alone represents true realism ; 
while the supporter of the People's points scorn- 
fully to the large number of operas produced at 
the Thalia. They both unite in condemning 
the Windsor, Professor Horowitz's theatre, as 
producing no new plays and as hopelessly be- 
hind the times, " full of historical plunder." An 
episode in The Ragpicker of Paris, played at the 
Windsor when the present People's company 
were there, amusingly illustrates the jealousy 
which exists between the companies. An old 
beggar is picking over a heap of moth-eaten, 
coverless books, some of which he keeps and 
some rejects. He comes across two versions of 
a play. The T^o Vagrants, one of which was used 

134 



at the Thalia and the other at the Windsor, 
The version used at the Windsor receives the 
beggar's commendation, and the other is thrown 
in a contemptuous manner into a dust-heap. 

REALISM, THE SPIRIT OF THE 
GHETTO THEATRE 

The distinctive thing about the intellectual and 
artistic life of the Russian Jews of the New 
York Ghetto, the spirit of realism, is noticeable 
even on the popular stage. The most interesting 
plays are those in which the realistic spirit pre- 
dominates, and the best among the actors and 
playwrights are the realists. The realistic ele- 
ment, too, is the latest one in the history of the 
Yiddish stage. The Jewish theatres in other 
parts of the world, which, compared with the 
three in New York, are unorganized, present only 
anachronistic and fantastic historical and Biblical 
plays, or comic opera with vaudeville specialties 
attached. These things, as we have said in the 
last section, are, to be sure, given in the Yiddish 
theatres on the Bowery too, but there are also 
plays which in part at least portray the customs 
and problems of the Ghetto community, and are 
of comparatively recent origin. 

There are two men connected with the Ghetto 
stage who particularly express the distinctive 

135 






realism of the intel- 
lectual east side — 
Jacob Adler, one of 
the two best actors, 
and Jacob Gordin, the play 
wright. Adler, a man of great 
energy, tried for many years 
to make a theatre succeed on 
the Bowery which should 
give only what he -called good 
plays. Gordin's dramas, with 
a few exceptions, were the 
only plays on contemporary 
life which Adler thought 
worthy of presentation. The 
attempt to give exclusively 
realistic art, which is the only art on the Bowery, 
failed. There, in spite of the widespread feeling 
for realism, the mass of the people desire to be 
amused and are bored by anything with the form 
of art. So now Adler is connected with the 
People's Theatre, which gives all sorts of shows, 
from Gordin's plays to ludicrous history, frivolous 
comic opera, and conventional melodrama. But 
Adler acts for the most part only in the better 
sort. He is an actor of unusual power and vivid- 
ness. Indeed, in his case, as in that of some 
other Bowery actors, it is only the Yiddish dia- 



JACOB ADLER 



I 



lect which stands between him and the distinc- 
tion of a wide reputation. 

In almost every play given on the Bowery all 
the elements are represented. Vaudeville, his- 
tory, realism, comic opera, are generally mixed 
together. Even in the plays of Gordin there are 
clownish and operatic intrusions, inserted as a 
conscious condition of success. On the other 
hand, even in the distinctively formless plays, in 
comic opera and melodrama, there are striking 
illustrations of the popular feeling for realism, — 
bits of dialogue, happy strokes of characteriza- 
tion of well-known Ghetto types, sordid scenes 
faithful to the life of the people. 

It is the acting which gives even to the plays 
having no intrinsic relation to reality a frequent 
quality of naturalness. The Yiddish players, 
even the poorer among them, act with remark- 
able sincerity. Entirely lacking in self-conscious- 
ness, they attain almost from the outset to a 
direct and forcible expressiveness. They, like 
the audience, rejoice in what they deem the truth. 
In the general lack of really good plays they yet 
succeed in introducing the note of realism. To be 
true to nature is their strongest passion, and even 
in a conventional melodrama their sincerity, or 
their characterization in the comic episodes, 
often redeems the play from utter barrenness. 

137 



And the little touches of truth to the life of the 
people are thoroughly appreciated by the audi- 
ence, much more generally so than in the case of 
the better plays to be described later, where 
there is more or less strictness of form and intel- 
lectual intention, difficult for the untutored crowd 
to understand. In the " easy " plays, it is the real- 
istic touches which tell most. The spectators 
laugh at the exact reproduction by the actor of 
a tattered type which they know well. A scene 
of perfect sordidness will arouse the sympathetic 
laughter or tears of the people. " It is so 
natural," they say to one another, "so true." 
The word " natural " indeed is the favorite term 
of praise in the Ghetto. What hits home to 
them, to their sense of humor or of sad fact, is 
sure to move, altho sometimes in a manner sur- 
prising to a visitor. To what seems to him very 
sordid and sad they will frequently respond with 
laughter. 

One of the most beloved actors in the Ghetto 
is Zelig Mogalesco, now at the People's Theatre, 
a comedran of natural talent and of the most" felic- 
itous instinct for characterization. Unlike the 
strenuous Adler, he has no ideas about realism 
or anything else. He acts in any kind of play, 
and could not tell the difference between truth 
and burlesque caricature. And yet he is remark- 

138 



able for his naturalness, and popular because of 
it. Adler with his ideas is sometimes too serious 
for the people, but Mogalesco's naive fidelity to 
reality always meets with the sympathy of a 
simple audience loving the homely and unpreten- 
tious truth. About Adler, strong actor that he 
is, and also about the talented Gordin, there is 
something of the doctrinaire. 

But, altho the best actors of the three Yiddish 
theatres in the Ghetto are realists by instinct 
and training, the thoroughly frivolous element in 
the plays has its prominent interpreters. Joseph 
Latteiner is the most popular playwright in the 
Bowery, and Boris Thomashevsky perhaps the 
most popular actor. Latteiner has written over 
a hundred plays, no one of which has form or 
ideas. He calls them 'Volksstucke (plays of the 
people), and naively admits that he writes directly 
to the demand. They are mainly mixed melo- 
drama, broad burlesque, and comic opera. His 
heroes are all intended for Boris Thomashevsky, 
a young man, fat, with curling black hair, languor- 
ous eyes, and a rather effeminate voice, who is 
thought very beautiful by the girls of the Ghetto. 
Thomashevsky has a face with no mimic capac- 
ity, and a temperament absolutely impervious 
to mood or feeling. But he picturesquely stands 
in the middle of the stage and declaims phleg- 

139 



matically the r61e of the hero, and satisfies the 
"romantic" demand of the audience. Nothing 
could show more clearly how much more genuine 
the feeling of the Ghetto is for fidelity to life than 
for romantic fancy. How small a part of the 
grace and charm of life the Yiddish audiences 
enjoy may be judged by the fact that the roman- 
tic appeal of a Thomashevsky is eminently satis- 
fying to them. Girls and men from the sweat- 
shops, a large part of such an audience, are 
moved by a very crude attempt at beauty. On 
the other hand they are so familiar with sordid 
fact, that the theatrical representation of it must 
be relatively excellent. Therefore the art of the 
Ghetto, theatrical and other, is deeply and pain- 
fully realistic. 

When we turn to Jacob Gordin's plays, to 
other plays of similar character and to the 
audiences to which they specifically appeal, 
we have realism worked out consciously in 
art, the desire to express life as it 
is, and at the same time the fre- 
quent expression of revolt against 
the reality of things, and particu- 
larly against the actual system of 
society. Consequently the "prob- 
lem " play has its representa- 
tion in the Ghetto. It pre- 
1 40 




JACOB GORDIN 



sents the hideous conditions of life in the Ghetto 
— the poverty, the sordid constant reference to 
money, the immediate sensuality, the jocular 
callousness — and underlying the mere statement 
of the facts an intellectual and passionate revolt. 
The thinking element of the Ghetto is largely 
Socialistic, and the Socialists flock to the theatre 
the nights when the Gordin type of play is pro- 
duced. They discuss the meaning and justice 
of the play between the acts, and after the per- 
formance repair to the Canal Street cafes to 
continue their serious discourse. The unthink- 
ing Nihilists are also represented, but not so 
frequently at the best plays as at productions in 
which are found crude and screaming condem- 
nation of existing conditions. The Anarchistic 
propaganda hired the Windsor Theatre for the 
establishment of a fund to start the Freie Arbei- 
ter Stimme, an anarchistic newspaper. The 
Beggar of Odessa was the play selected, — an 
adaptation of the 'Ragpicker of ^aris, a play by 
Felix Piot, the Anarchistic agitator of the French 
Commune in 1871. The features of the play 
particularly interesting to the audience were 
those emphasizing the clashing of social classes. 
The old ragpicker, a model man, clever, bril- 
liant, and good, is a philosopher too, and says 
many things warmly welcomed by the audience. 

141 



As he picks up his rags he sings about how 
even the clothing of the great comes but to 
dust. His adopted daughter is poor, and conse- 
quently noble and sweet. The villains are all 
rich ; all the very poor characters are good. 
Another play, TJogele, is partly a satire of the 
rich Jew by the poor Jew. "The rich Jews," 
sang the comedian, "toil not, neither do they 
spin. They work not, they suffer not, why 
then do they live on this earth?" This un- 
thinking revolt is the opposite pole to the un- 
thinking vaudeville and melodrama. In many 
cf the plays referred to roughly as of the Gordin- 
Adler type — altho they were not all written by 
Gordin nor played by Adler — we find a realism 
more true in feeling and cast in stronger dra- 
matic form. In some of these plays there is no 
problem element ; in few is that element so 
prominent as essentially to interfere with the 
character of the play as a presentation of life. 

One of the plays most characteristic, as at 
once presenting the life of the Ghetto and sug- 
gesting its problems, is cMinna, or the Yiddish 
Nora. Altho the general idea of Ibsen's 'Doll's 
House is taken, the atmosphere and life are 
original. The first scene represents the house 
of a poor Jewish laborer on the east side. His 
wife and daughter are dressing to go to see 

142 



A 'Doll's House with the boarder,— a young man 
whom they have been forced to take into the 
house because of their poverty. He is full of 
ideas and philosophy, and the two women fall in 
love with him, and give him all the good things 
to eat. When the laborer returns from his hard 
day's work, he finds that there is nothing to eat, 
and that his wife and daughter are going to the 
play with the boarder. The women despise the 
poor man, who is fit only to work, eat, and 
sleep. The wife philosophizes on the atrocity 
of marrying a man without intellectual interests, 
and finally drinks carbolic acid. This Ibsen idea 
is set in a picture rich with realistic detail : the 
dialect, the poverty, the types of character, the 
humor of Yiddish New York. Jacob Adler 
plays the husband, and displays a vivid imagina- 
tion for details calculated to bring out the man's 
beseeching bestiality : his filthy manners, his 
physical ailments, his greed, the quickness of 
his anger and of resulting pacification. Like 
most of the realistic plays of the Ghetto, Minna 
is a genuine play of manners. It has a general 
idea, and presents also the setting and charac- 
ters of reality. 

The Slaughter, written by Gordin, and with the 
main masculine character taken by David Kess- 
ler, an actor of occasionally great realistic 

143 



strength, is the story of the symbolic murder of 
a fragile young girl by her parents, who force 
her to marry a rich man who has all the vices and 
whom she hates. The picture of the poor house, 
of the old mother and father and half-witted step- 
son with whom the girl is unconsciously in love, 
in its faithfulness to life is typical of scenes in 
many of these plays. It is rich in character and 
milieu drawing. There is another scene of miser- 
able life in the second act. The girl is married 
and living with the rich brute. In the same 
house is his mistress, curt and cold, and two 
children by a former wife. The old parents 
come to see the wife ; she meets them with the 
joy of starved affection. But the husband enters 
and changes the scene to one of hate and vio- 
lence. The old mother tells him, however, of 
the heir that is to come. Then there is a su- 
perb scene of naive joy in the midst of all the 
sordid gloom. There is rapturous delight of the 
old people, turbulent triumph of the husband, and 
satisfaction of the young wife. They make a 
holiday of it. Wine is brought. They all love 
one another for the time. The scene is repre- 
sentative of the way the poor Jews welcome 
their offspring. But indescribable violence and 
abuse follow, and the wife finally kills her 
husband, in a scene where realism riots into 

144 



burlesque, as it frequently does on the Yid- 
dish stage. 

But for absolute, intense realism Gordin's 
Wild Man, unrelieved by a problem idea, is un- 
rivaled. An idiot boy falls in love with his step- 
mother without knowing what love is. He is 
abused by his father and brother, beaten on 
account of his ineptitudes. His sister and an- 
other brother take his side, and the two camps 
revile each other in unmistakable language. The 
father marries again ; his new wife is a heartless, 
faithless woman, and she and the daughter quar- 
rel. After repeated scenes of brutality to the idiot, 
the daughter is driven out to make her own living. 
Adler's portraiture of the idiot is a great bit of 
technical acting. The poor fellow is filled with 
the mysterious wonderings. of an incapable 
mind. His shadow terrifies and interests him. 
He philosophizes about life and death. He is 
puzzled and worried by everything ; the slightest 
sound preys on him. Physically alert, his senses 
serve only to trouble and terrify the mind which 
cannot interpret what they present. The bur- 
lesque which Mr. Adler puts into the part was 
inserted to please the crowd, but increases the 
horror of it, as when Lear went mad ; for the 
Elizabethan audiences laughed, and had their 
souls wrung at the same time. The idiot ludi- 

^45 



crously describes his growing love. In pantomime 
he tells a long story. It is evident, even without 
words, that he is constructing a complicated 
symbolism to express what he does not know. 
He falls into epilepsy and joins stiffly in the 
riotous dance. The play ends so fearfully that 
it shades into mere burlesque. 

This horrible element in so many of these plays 
marks the point where realism passes into fan- 
tastic sensationalism. The facts of life in the 
Ghetto are in themselves unpleasant, and conse- 
quently it is natural that a dramatic exaggera- 
tion of them results in something poignantly 
disagreeable. The intense seriousness of the 
Russian Jew, which accounts for what is excel- 
lent in these plays, explains also the rasping 
falseness of the extreme situations. It is a cur- 
ious fact that idiots, often introduced in the Yid- 
dish plays, amuse the Jewish audience as much 
as they used to the Elizabethan mob. 

One of the most skillful of Gordin's Yiddish 
adaptations is The Oath, founded on Hauptman's 
Fuhrmann HenscheU In the first act a dying peas- 
ant is exhibited on the stage. In Hauptman's 
play it is a woman ; in Gordin's it is a man. He is 
racked with coughing. A servant clatters over 
the floor with her heavy boots. Another servant 
feeds the sick man from a coarse bowl and the 

146 



steward works at the household accounts. The 
dying man's wife, and their little boy, enter 
and it is apparent that something has been 
going on between her and the steward. They 
and the servants dine realistically and coarsely 
and neglect the dying man. When they leave, 
the dying man teaches his son how to say 
"Kaddish" for his soul when he is dead. When 
he dies he makes his wife swear that she will 
never marry again. In the second act she is 
about to marry the steward, and the Jewish 
customs are here used, as is often the case 
with the Yiddish playwright, to intensify the 
dramatic effect of a scene. It is just a year from 
the time of her husband's death, and the candles 
are burning, therefore, on the table. According 
to the orthodox belief the soul of the dead is 
present when the candles burn. The little 
boy, feeling that his mother is about to marry 
again, blows out the candles. The mother, 
horror-stricken, rushes to him and asks him 
why he did it. " I did not want my father to see 
that you are going to marry again," says the 
little fellow. It was an affecting scene and left 
few dry eyes in the audience. 

At the beginning of the third act the wife and 
servant are living together, married. He comes 
on the stage, sleepy, brutal, calling loudly for a 

147 



drink, abuses the little boy and quarrels with his 
wife ; he is a crude, dishonorable, coarse brute. 
He drives away a faithful servant and returns to 
his swinish slumber. An old couple, the woman 
being the sister of the dead man, who are 
always torturing the wife with having broken 
her vow, hint to her that her new husband is 
too attentive to the maid-servant. She is angry 
and incredulous, and calls the maid to her, but 
when she sees her in the doorway, before a word 
is spoken, she realizes it is true, and sends her 
away. The husband enters and she passionately 
taxes him. He admits it, but justifies himself: 
he is young, a high-liver, etc., why shouldn't he ? 
Just then the child is brought in, drowned in the 
river nearby. 

In the beginning of the fourth and last act the 
husband again appears as a riotous, jovial fellow. 
He has played a joke and turned a driver out 
of his cart, and he nearly splits his sides with 
merriment. Drunk, he admirably sings a song 
and dances. His wife enters. She hears her vow 
repeated by the winds, by the trees, everywhere. 
Her dead child haunts her. Her husband has 
stolen and misspent their money. She talks with 
the faithful servant about the maid's baby. She 
wanders about at night, unable to sleep. Her 
brute husband calls to her from the house, saying 

148 



he is afraid to sleep alone. Another talk ensues 
between them. He asks her why she is old so 
soon. She burns the house and herself, the 
neighbors rush in, and the play is over. 

Some of the more striking of the realistic plays 
on the Ghetto stage have been partly described, 
but realism in the details of character and setting 
appears in all of them, even in comic opera and 
melodrama. In many the element of revolt, even 
if it is not the basis of the play, is expressed in 
occasional dialogues. Burlesque runs through 
them all, but burlesque, after all, is a comment 
on the facts of life. And all these points are em- 
phasized and driven home by sincere and forcible 
acting. 

Crude in form as these plays are, and unpleas- 
ant as they often are in subject and in the life 
portrayed, they are yet refreshing to persons 
who have been bored by the empty farce and 
inane cheerfulness of the uptown theatres. 

THE HISTORY OF THE YIDDISH 
STAGE 
The Yiddish stage, founded in Roumania in 
1876 by Abraham Goldfaden, has reached its 
highest development in the city of New York, 
where there are seventy or eighty professional 
actors; not far from a dozen playwrights, of 

149 



whom three have written collectively more than 
three hundred plays; dramas on almost every 
subject, produced on the inspiration of various 
schools of dramatic art ; and an enormous Rus- 
sian Jewish colony, which fills the theatres and 
creates so strong a demand that the stage re- 
sponds with a distinctive, complete, and interest- 
ing popular art. 

The best actor now in the Ghetto, with one 
exception, was in the original company. That 
exception, with the help of a realistic playwright 
introduced an important element in the develop- 
ment of the stage. With the lives of these three 
men the history of the Yiddish stage is inti- 
mately connected. The first actor was a singer 
in the synagogue of Bucharest, the first play- 
wright a composer of Yiddish songs. The foun- 
dation of the Yiddish stage might therefore be 
said to lie in the Bucharest synagogue and the 
popular music-hall performance. 

Zelig Mogalesco, the best comedian in the 
New York Ghetto, has seen, altho not quite 
forty years of age, the birth of the Yiddish stage, 
and may survive its death. He was born in 
Koloraush, a town in the province of Bessarabia, 
near Roumania. His father was a poor shop- 
keeper, and Mogalesco never went to school. 
But he was endowed by nature with a remark- 

'5° 



able voice and ear, and composed music with 
easy felicity. The population of the town was 
orthodox Jewish, and consequently no theatre 
was allowed. It was therefore in the synagogue 
that the musical appetite of the Jews found sat- 
isfaction. It was the habit of the poor people to 
hire as inexpensive a cantor as possible, and this 
cantor might very well be ignorant of everything 
except singing. Yet these cantors were so pop- 
ular that the famous ones travelled from town to 
town, in much the same way that the visiting 
German actor — Gasi — does to-day, and sometimes 
charged admission fees. 

When Mogalesco was nine years old, Nissy 
of the town of Bells, the most famous cantor in 
the south of Russia, visited Mogalesco's town. 
The boy's friends urged him to visit the great 
man and display his voice. Little Mogalesco, 
with his mezzo-soprano, went to the inn, and 
Nissy was astounded. "My dear boy," he said, 
"go home and fetch your parents." With them 
the cantor signed a contract by which Zelig was 
bound to him as a kind of musical apprentice for 
three years. The boy was to receive his board 
and clothing, five rubles, the first year, ten the 
second, and fifteen the third — fifteen dollars for 
the three years. 

Soon Mogalesco became widely known among 



the cantors of South Russia. In six months he 
could read music so well that they called him 
" Little Zelig, the music-eater." At the end of 
the first year the leading cantor of Bucharest, 
Israel Kupfer, who, by the way, has been cantor 
in a New York synagogue of the east side, went 
to Russia to secure the services of Mogalesco. 
To avoid the penalties of a broken contract, 
Kupfer hurried with little Zelig to Roumania, 
and the boy remained in Bucharest for several 
years. At the age of fourteen he conducted a 
choir of twenty men under Kupfer. He also be- 
came director of the chorus in the Gentile opera. 
While there he began "to burn," as he expressed 
it, with a desire to go on the stage, but the Gen- 
tiles would not admit the talented Jew. 

It was when Mogalesco was about twenty 
years old that the Yiddish stage was born. In 
1876 or 1877, Abraham Goldfaden went to Bu- 
charest. This man had formerly been a success- 
ful merchant in Russia, but had failed. He was 
a poet, and to make a living he called that art 
into play. In Russia he had written many Yid- 
dish songs, set them to music, and sung them in 
private. In the society in which he lived he 
deemed that beneath his dignity, but when he 
lost his money he went to Bucharest and there 
on the stage sang his own poems, the music for 

152 



which he took from many sources. He became 
a kind of music-hall performer, but did not 
long remain satisfied with this modest art. His 
dissatisfaction led him to create what later de- 
veloped into the present Yiddish theatre. The 
Talmud prohibited the stage, but at the time 
when Goldfaden was casting about for some- 
thing to do worthy of his genius, the gymnasia 
were thrown open to the Jews, and the result 
was a more tolerant spirit. Therefore, Gold- 
faden decided to found a Yiddish theatre. 
He went to Kupfer, the cantor, and Kupfer rec- 
ommended Mogalesco as an actor for the new 
company. Goldfaden saw the young man act, 
and the comedy genius of Mogalesco helped in 
the initial idea of a Yiddish play. Mogalesco 
at first refused to enter into the scheme. A Yid- 
dish drama seemed too narrow to him, for he 
aspired to the Christian stage. But when Gold- 
faden offered to adopt him and teach him the 
Gentile languages Mogalesco agreed and became 
the first Yiddish actor. Other singers in Kup- 
fer's choir also joined Goldfaden's company. 

Thus the foundation of the Yiddish stage lay 
in the Bucharest synagogue. The beginnings, 
of course, were small. Several other actors were 
secured, among them Moses Silbermann, who is 
still acting on the New York Ghetto stage. No 

153 



girls could at that time be obtained for the stage, 
for it is against the Talmudic law for a man even 
to hear a girl sing, and men consequently played 
female roles, as in Elizabethan times in Eng- 
land. The first play that Goldfaden wrote was 
The Grandmother and her Grandchild; the second 
was The Shivendnck and Mogalesco played 
the grandmother in one and a little spoiled boy 
in the other. His success in both was enormous, 
and he still enacts on the Bowery the part of the 
little boy. The first performances of Goldfaden's 
play were given in Bucharest, at the time of the 
Russian-Turkish war, and the city was filled 
with Russian contractors and workmen. They 
overcrowded the theatre, and applauded Moga- 
lesco to the echo. From that time the success 
of the Yiddish stage was assured. Goldfaden 
tried to get a permit to act in Russia, without 
success at first ; but he played in Odessa with- 
out a license, in a secret way, and in the end a 
permit was secured. Other Yiddish companies 
sprang up. Girls were admitted to the chorus, 
and women began to play female roles. The 
first woman on the Yiddish stage was a girl who 
is now Mrs. Karb, and who may be seen in the Yid- 
dish company at present in the People's Theatre 
on the Bowery. She is the best liked of all the 
Ghetto's actresses, has been a sweet singer, 

154 



and is now an actress of considerable distinction. 
In Bucharest, before she went on the stage, she 
was a tailor-girl, and used to sing in the shop. 
She appeared in 1878 in The Evi! Eye, and 
made an immediate hit. That was the third 
Yiddish play, and, in the absence of Goldfaden, it 
was written by the prompter, Joseph Latteiner, 
who, with the possible exception of Professor 
Horowitz, who began to write about the same 
time, was for many years the most popular play- 
wright in the New York Ghetto. 

In 1884 the Yiddish theatre was forbidden in 
Russia. It was supposed by the Government to 
be a hotbed of political plots, but some of the 
Yiddish actors think that the jealousy of Gentile 
actors was responsible for this idea. Two years 
before there had been a transmigration of Rus- 
sian and Roumanian Jews to America on a large 
scale. Therefore the players banished from 
Russia had a refuge and an audience in New 
York. In 1884 the first Yiddish company came 
to this country. It was not Goldfaden's or Mo- 
galesco's company, but one formed after them. 
In it were actors who still act in New York — 
Moses Heine, Moses Silbermann, Mrs. Karb, and 
Latteiner the playwright. 

The first Yiddish theatre was called the Ori- 
ental. It was a music-hall on the Bowery, trans- 

15s 



formed for the purpose. A year later Mogalesco, 
Kessler, Professor Horowitz, and their company 
came to New York and opened the Roumania 
Theatre. From that time they changed theatres 
frequently. It is worthy of note that with one 
exception the actors identified with the begin- 
nings of the Yiddish stage are still the best. 

That exception is Jacob Adler, who, not count- 
ing Mogalesco, is the best actor in the Ghetto. 
They are both character actors, but Mogalesco 
is essentially a comedian, while Adler plays 
roles ranging from burlesque to tragedy. Moga- 
lesco is a natural genius, with a spontaneity 
superior to that of Adler, but he has no general 
education nor intellectual life. But the forcible 
Adler, a man of great energy, a fighter, is filled 
with one great idea, which is almost a passion 
with him, and which has marked a development 
in the Yiddish theatre. To be natural, to be 
real, to express the actual life of the people, with 
serious intent, is what Jacob Adler stands for. 
Up to the time when he appeared on the scene 
in New York there had been no serious plays 
acted on the Yiddish stage. Comic opera, lurid 
melodrama, adaptations and translations, histori- 
cal plays representing the traditions of the Jews, 
were exclusively the thing. Through the acting, 
indeed, which on the Yiddish stage is constantly 

,56 



animated by the desire for sincerity and natural- 
ness, the real Hfe of the people was constantly 
suggested in some part of the play. When Mo- 
galesco took a comic part, he would interpolate 
phrases and actions, suggesting that life, which 
he instinctively and spontaneously knew, and it 
was so with the other actors also. But this ele- 
ment was accidental and fragmentary previous 
to the coming of Jacob Adler. 

Until then Latteiner and Professor Horowitz, 
the authors of the first historical plays of the 
Yiddish stage, and still the most popular play- 
wrights in the Ghetto, held almost undisputed 
sway. 

Joseph Latteiner, of whom brief mention has 
already been made, represents thoroughly the 
strong commercial spirit of the Yiddish stage. 
He writes with but one thought, to please the 
mass of the people, writes "easy plays," to quote 
his own words. His plays, therefore, are the 
very spirit of formlessness — burlesque, popularly 
vulgar jokes, flat heroism combined about the 
flimsiest dramatic structure. He is the type of 
the business man of the Ghetto. Altho success- 
ful, he lives in an unpleasant tenement, and 
seems much poorer than he really is. He has an 
unemphatic, conciliatory manner of talking, and 
everything he says is discouragingly practical. 

*S7 



He is a Roumanian Jew, forty-six years of age. 
His parents intended him for a rabbi, but he was 
too poor to reach the goal, altho he learned 
several languages. These afterwards stood him 
in good stead, for he often translates and adapts 
plays for the Bowery stage. Unable to be a 
rabbi, Latteiner cast about for a means of making 
his living. As a boy he was not interested in the 
stage, but one day he saw a German play in one 
act and thought he could adapt it with music to 
the Yiddish stage. It was successful, and Lat- 
teiner, as he put it, "discovered himself." He 
has since written over a hundred plays, and is 
engaged by the company at the Thalia Theatre 
as the regular playwright. He calls himself 
%olksdichierf and maintains that his plays improve 
with the taste of the people, but this statement 
is open to considerable doubt. 

In speaking of the popular playwright, and the 
purely commercial character and consequent 
formlessness of the plays before the appearance 
of Adler, important mention should be made of 
Boris Thomashevsky, already briefly referred to 
as the idol of the Jewish matinee girls. He is 
the most popular actor on the Yiddish stage, 
and for him Latteiner particularly writes. Thom- 
ashevsky is a large fat man, with expression- 
less features and curly black hair, which he 

158 



arranges in leonine forms. He generally ap- 
pears as the hero, and is a successful tho a 
rather listless barnstormer. The more intel- 
ligent of his audience are inclined to smile at 
Mr. Thomashevsky's talent in romantic parts, of 
the reality of which, however, he, with a large 
section of the community, is very firmly con- 
vinced. In fairness, however, it should be said 
that when Mr. Thomashevsky occasionally leaves 
the role of hero for an unsentimental character, 
particularly one which expresses supercilious 
superiority, he is excellent. As time goes on he 
will probably take less and less the romantic lead 
and grow more and more satisfactory. He is 
the youngest of the prominent actors of the 
Bowery. Before the coming of Heine's company 
in 1884, he was a pretty little boy in the Ghetto, 
who used to play female roles in amateur the- 
atricals. But when the professionals came he 
was eclipsed, and went out of sight for some 
time. He grew to be a handsome man, how- 
ever; his voice changed, and, with the help of a 
very different man, Jacob Adler, Thomashevsky 
found an important place on the Yiddish stage. 
He and Adler are now the leading actors of the 
People's Theatre, but they never appear to- 
gether, Thomashevsky being the main interpre- 
ter of the plays which appeal distinctively to the 

i$9 



rabble, and Adler of those which form the really 
original Yiddish drama of a serious nature. 

Jacob Adler was born in Odessa, Russia, in 
1855, of middle-class parents. He went to the 
public school, but was very slow to learn, and 
was treated roughly by his teachers, whose fav- 
orite weapon was a ruler of thorns. School, 
therefore, as he says, "made a bad impression " 
on him, and he left it for business, but got along 
equally badly there, not being able to brook the 
brutally expressed authority of his masters. But 
while he passed rapidly from one firm to another, 
through the kindness of a wealthy uncle he was 
able to cut a swell figure in Odessa, and became 
a dandy and something of a lady-killer. He was 
then only eighteen, but the serious ideas which 
at a later time he strenuously sought to bring 
into prominence in New York already began to 
assert themselves. Then there was no Yiddish 
theatre, but of the Gentile Russian theatre in 
Odessa he was very fond. The serious realistic 
Russian play was what particularly took his fancy. 
The Russian tragedians Kozelski and Milos- 
lowski especially helped to form his taste, and 
he soon became a critic well known in the gal- 
leries. It was the habit of Russian audiences to 
express their ideas and impressions on the spot. 
The galleries were divided into parties, with op- 

160 



posing artistic principles. One party hissed 
while the other applauded, and then and there 
they held debates, between the acts and even 
during the performance. Adlersoon became one 
of the fiercest leaders of such a party that Odessa 
had ever known. He stood for realism, for the 
direct expression of the life of the people. All 
else he hissed down, and did it so effectively that 
the actors tried to conciliate him. One season 
two actresses of talent, but of different schools, 
were playing in Odessa — Glebowa, whom Adler 
supported because of her naturalness, and Koz- 
lowski, whose style was affected and artificial 
from Adler's point of view. After the strife be- 
tween the rival parties had waged for some time 
very fiercely, one night Kozlowski sent for Adler, 
and asked him what she could do to get the 
great critic to join her party. Adler replied that 
so long as Glebowa played with such wonderful 
naturalness he should remain faithful to her 
colors, and advised Kozlowski, who was a kind 
of Russian Bernhardt, to change her style. 

Adler's lack of education always weighed on 
his spirit, and his high ideals of the stage seemed 
to shut that art away from him. Yet his friends 
who heard him recite the speeches of his favorites, 
which he easily remembered, told him he had 
talent. " I wanted to believe them," Adler said, 

i6i 



"but I always thought that the actor ought to 
know everything in order to interpret humanity." 

But just about that time, when Adler was 
twenty-three years old, he heard that a theatre 
had been started in Roumania by a Russian Jew 
named Goldfaden, and that the actors spoke 
Yiddish. 

"I was astonished," he said. "How could 
they act a play in a language without literature, 
in the jargon of our race, and who could be the 
actors?" 

Soon Adler heard that the Jewish singers of 
hymns who sometimes visited Odessa, and who 
moved him so, because "they sang so pitifully," 
were the actors of the first Yiddish company, 
and his astonishment grew. In 1879 Goldfaden 
went to Odessa with his company, and his 
theatre was crowded with Gentiles as well as 
Jews ; and Adler saw with his eyes what he had 
hardly believed possible — a Jewish company in a 
Yiddish play. The plays, however, seemed to 
Adler very poor — mainly light opera with vaude- 
ville accompaniment — and the acting was also 
poor ; but Israel Rosenberg, whom Adler de- 
scribes as a long-faced Jew with protruding 
teeth, enormous eyes, and a mouth as wide as a 
saucer, amused Adler with the wit which he in- 
terpolated as he acted. Rosenberg, " more 

162 



ignorant than I," says Adler, "was yet very suc- 
cessful." The two became intimate, and Rosen- 
berg and Fraulein Oberlander urged Adler to go 
on the stage ; Rosenberg because Adler at that 
time was comparatively rich, and the Fraulein 
because she loved (and afterwards married) the 
vigorous young man from Odessa. And Adler 
felt his education to be superior to that of these 
successful actors, and decided to make the ex- 
periment. To choose the stage, however, was 
to choose poverty, as he had begun to succeed in 
business, but he did not hesitate and, leaving his 
friends and family, he went on a tour with the 
company. 

In the first performance he was so frightened 
that he did not hear his own words. He lost all 
his critical faculty, and played merely instinc- 
tively. It was a long time before he acted better 
than the average, which was at that time very 
low ; but, finally, in a small town named Eliza- 
betgrad, Adler learned his lesson. A critic 
visited the theatre every night, and wrote long 
articles upon it, but Adler never found his name 
mentioned therein. He used to get up in the 
morning very early, before any one else, to buy 
the newspaper, but was always chagrined to find 
that the great man had overlooked him. At first 
he thought that the critic must have a personal 

163 



spite against him, then that he was not noticed 
because he had only small roles. At last he was 
cast for a very long and emotional role. He 
thought that this part would surely fetch the 
critic, and the next morning eagerly bought a 
paper, but there was no criticism of the play at 
all. Rosenberg went to the critic and asked 
the reason. 

" Adler spoiled the whole thing," was the reply. 
" His acting was unnatural and loud. I advise 
him to leave the stage." 

"Then," said Adler, "I began to think. I cut 
my hair, which I had allowed to grow long after 
the fashion of actors, and was at first much dis- 
couraged. But thereafter I studied every role 
with great care, and read the classic plays, and 
never played a part until I understood it. Before 
that it was play with me ; but after that it was 
serious work." 

For a number of years Adler continued to act 
in the cities of Russia, and became the head of a 
company. In 1883, when Russia was closed to 
the Jewish stage, Adler took his company to 
London, where he nearly starved. There was 
no Ghetto there, and the company gave occa- 
sional performances at various Yiddish clubs 
scattered through the city. Adler lost all his 
money, and got into debt. His wife and child 

164 



died, and at one time in despair he thought of 
leaving the stage. But it was too late to go 
back to Odessa, for he had once for all cut him- 
self off from his family and friends. He was 
falsely informed by a Jew who had been to 
America that to succeed there he would have 
to sing, dance, and speak German. So he 
stayed some time longer in London. The Roths- 
childs, Dr. Felix Adler, and others, took an in- 
terest in him, and told him that as the Jewish 
theatre could have no future, since Yiddish must 
ultimately be forgotten, he had better give it up. 
It was in 1887 that Adler came to New York, 
where he found two Yiddish companies already 
well started. To avoid conflict with them, he 
went to Chicago, where, however, a Yiddish 
theatre could get no foothold. Some rich Chi- 
cago people tried to induce Adler to learn Eng- 
lish and go on the American stage ; but Adler, 
always distrustful of his education and ability to 
learn, declined their offers, now much to his 
regret. He returned to New York, where Mo- 
galesco and Kessler urged him to stay, but the 
Ghetto actors in general were hostile to him, and 
he went back to London. The next year, how- 
ever, he was visited by four of the managers of 
the New York Ghetto companies (among them 
Mogalesco), vying with one another to secure 

i6s 



Adler, whose reputation in the Jewish commu- 
nity was rapidly growing. He went back to 
New York in 1889, where he appeared first at 
the Germania Theatre. He was advertised in 
advance as a Salvini, a Barrett, a Booth, as all 
stars combined. When he found how extrava- 
gantly he had been announced he was angry, 
and wanted to go back to London, feeling that 
it was impossible to live up to what his foolish 
managers had led the people to expect. He 
consented to stay, but refused to appear in 
Uriel Acosia for which he was billed, prefer- 
ring to begin in comedy, in order not to appear 
to compete with the reputation of Salvini. The 
play, which was called The Ragpicker^ can still 
be seen in the Ghetto. In it Adler tried to 
score as a character actor. But the people, ex- 
pecting a tragedy, took The Ragpicker seriously, 
and did not laugh at all. The play fell flat, 
and the managers rushed before the curtain 
and told the audience that Adler was a poor 
actor, and that they had been deceived in him. 
Through the influence of the management, the 
whole company treated him with coldness and 
contempt, except the wife of one of the directors. 
She is now Mrs. Adler, and is one of the capable 
serious actresses at present at the People's 
Theatre. Finally, the lease of the theatre 

166 



passed into Adler's hands, and he dismissed the 
whole company and formed a new one. Soon 
after began the struggle which brought about 
the latest development of the Yiddish stage. 

For some time Adler was successful, but he 
grew more and more dissatisfied with his reper- 
tory. He could find no plays which seriously 
portrayed the life of the people or contained any 
serious ideas. Only the translated plays were 
good from his point of view; he wished some- 
thing original, and looked about for a playwright. 
One night in a restaurant he was introduced to 
Jacob Gordin, who afterwards wrote the greater 
part of the only serious original Yiddish plays 
which exist. 

Gordin at that time had written no plays, but 
he was a man of varied literary activity, of a 
rarely good education, a thorough Russian 
schooling, and of uncommon intelligence and 
strength of character. He is Russian in appear- 
ance, a large broad-headed man with thick black 
hair and beard. As he told me in his little home 
in Brooklyn, the history of his life, he omitted 
all picturesque details, and emphasized only his 
intellectual development. He was born in the 
same town as Gogol, Ubigovrod in southern 
Russia, of rich parents. As a boy he frequented 
the theatre, and like Adler, became a local critic 

167 



and hissed down what he did not approve. Like 
Adler, too, he was often carried off to the poHce 
station and fined. He married early, became a 
school-teacher and then a journalist (in Russian), 
writing every sort of article, except political, and 
often sketches and short stories for newspapers 
and periodicals in Odessa, where he finally con- 
trolled a newspaper — the Odessakianovosti, He 
was a great admirer of Tolstoi, and desiring to 
live on a farm to put into practice the Count's 
ideas, he came to America in 1891, and nearly 
starved. He became an editor of a Russian 
newspaper in New York and contributed to 
other journals. In his own paper he wrote vio- 
lent articles against the Russian Government, as 
well as literary sketches. In Russia, Gordin had 
never been in a Yiddish theatre, and when he 
met Adler in the New York restaurant he knew 
little of the conventional Yiddish play. So he 
wrote his first play in a fresh spirit, with only 
the character of the people and his own ideals 
to work from. Siberia, produced in 1892, was a 
success with the critics and actors, and may 
fairly be called the first original Yiddish play of 
the better type. 

The play struck a new»note. It fell into line 
with the Russian spirit of realism now so marked 
in intellectual circles in the Ghetto. Life and 

168 



types are what Gordin tried for, and Jacob Adler 
had found his playwright. Since then Gordin 
has written about fifty plays, some of which have 
been successful, and many have been 
marked by literary and dramatic power. 
Some of the better ones are Siberia, 
the JcTvish King Lear, The Wild Man, The 
Je%>ish Priest, Solomon Kaus, The 
Slaughter, and the Je%>ish Queen 
Lear, Jacob Adler has been until 
recently his chief interpreter, altho 
Mogalesco, Kessler, and Thomas- 
hevsky take his plays. 

For several years an actress, 
Mrs. Liptzen, was the main inter- 
preter of Gordin's plays. She is 
one of the most individual, if not 
one of the most skillful, actresses 
on the stage of New York's Ghet- 
to, and is sometimes spoken of in | 
the quarter as the Yiddish Duse. 
She is the only actress of the east 
side who is thus compared, by a 
sub-title, with a famous Gentile 
artist, altho in many directions 
there is a great tendency in the 
Ghetto to adopt foreign names and 
ideas. As a matter of fact, her art is 

169 





MADAM LIPTZEN 



exceedingly limited, but she has the unusual dis- 
tinction of appearing only in the best plays, 
steadfastly refusing to take part in performances 
which she deems to be dramatically unworthy. 
She consequently appears very seldom, usually 
only in connection with the production of a new 
play by Jacob Gordin, who at present writes 
many of his plays with the "Yiddish Duse " in 
mind. 

Mrs. Liptzen was born in Zitomir, South Rus- 
sia, and was interested exclusively in the stage 
from her childhood. The founder of the Yiddish 
stage, Abraham Goldfaden, and Jacob Adler, 
played in her town for a few nights when she 
was about eighteen years old. Her parents 
were orthodox Jews, and to go to the theatre 
she was forced to resort to subterfuge. She be- 
came acquainted with Goldfaden and Adler, and 
ran away from home in order to accompany them 
as an actress. At first she sang and acted in 
such popular operatic plays as T>er Schmendrik, 
and continued for three years in Russia, until the 
Yiddish theatre was forbidden there. Then she 
went with a new company to Berlin, where the 
whole aggregation nearly starved. They were 
reduced to selling all their stage properties, the 
proceeds of which were made away with by a 
dishonest agent. During the time their per- 

170 



formances in Berlin continued Mrs. Liptzen re- 
ceived, it is said, the sum of ten pfennige (two 
and one-half cents) a day, on which she lived. 
She paid five pfennige for lodging and five pfen- 
nige for bread and coffee ; and there is left in her 
now a correspondingly amazing impression of 
the cheapness with which she could live in Ger- 
many in those days. 

Jacob Adler was at that time in London with 
a company, eking out a miserable existence. 
He wrote to Mrs. Liptzen's husband, an invalid 
in Odessa, to send his wife to London to play in 
his company. About 1886 Mrs. Liptzen went to 
London and played in Esther von Engedi (the Yid- 
dish Othdto)f Leah the Forsaken, Rachel, The Je<ws, 
etc. In London she stc.yed three years, when, 
the theatre burning down, she went with Adler 
to Chicago. They tried to find a place in New 
York, but the Yiddish company, with Kessler 
and Mogalesco at its head, already in New 
York, froze them out, and they tried to get a 
foothold in Chicago. A little later Mrs. Liptzen 
left Chicago for New York, called by the Yiddish 
company there to play leading parts. She be- 
gan in New York with Leah the Forsaken, and re- 
ceived only $10 for the first three performances. 
It is said that she now receives from $100 to 
$200 for every performance, a fact indicating not 

171 



only her growth in popularity but also the great 
financial success of the Yiddish theatres in New 
York. 

Twelve years ago Mrs. Liptzen retired for a 
time from the stage, the reason being that there 
were no new plays in which she desired to ap- 
pear, since the demand was entirely supplied by 
the romantic and historical operatic playwrights, 
Prof. Horowitz and Mr. Latteiner. 

It was not until Jacob Gordin came into 
prominence as a realistic playwright, that Mrs. 
Liptzen came out of her dignified retirement. 
Jacob Adler was the first to play Gordin's 
pieces ; but he played many others, too, trying 
in a practical way gradually to make the cause 
of realism triumphant. Mrs. Liptzen, however, 
made no compromise, and kept quiet until she 
was able to get the plays she wanted, which 
soon were written by Gordin. 

Mrs. Liptzen's first success with a Gordin 
play was in Medza., for which Gordin received, it 
is said, the enormous sum of $85 — having sold 
plays previous to that time for the well-fixed 
price of $35. Media's Youth, v^rritten by Gordin 
for Mrs. Liptzen, was a failure, altho the author 
thought so well of it as a literary production 
that he had it translated into English. The 
next of Mrs. Liptzen's successes was the: Jewish 

172 



Queen Lear, for which Gordin received $200 — an 
enormous sum for a Yiddish playwright in those 
days. The Slaughter was produced two years ago, 
and last year Mrs. Liptzen appeared in Gordin's 
The Oath, a Yiddish production of Fuhrmann Hen- 
scheL Of late Mr. Gordin's plays have been pro- 
duced by a younger actress of more varied talent 
than Mrs. Liptzen — Mrs. Bertha Kalisch, on the 
whole a much worthier interpreter than the 
older woman. 

It is Adler, however, who has been the bellig- 
erent promoter of the original and serious Yid- 
dish drama. In 1893 he tried to introduce Gor- 
din's plays and the new spirit of realism and 
literature into his company at the Windsor 
Theatre. But the old style is still strong in pop- 
ular affection, and Adler's company rebelled. 
Whereupon Adler went to Russia to form a new 
company which would be more amenable to his 
ideas. He came back with the new troupe, and 
ordered a new play from Gordin, who produced 
The Jemjtsh King Lear. At the first reading 
of the play the company protested, but Adler 
begged for a trial, telling them that they did not 
know what a good play was. The play proved 
a great and, deserved success, and is now fre- 
quently repeated. It contains several scenes of 
great power, and portrays with faithful art the 

173 



life of the Russian Jew. In 1894 Adler tried the 
experiment of leasing a small theatre, the Rou- 
mania, in which nothing but plays which ex- 
pressed his ideas should be presented. A num- 
ber of Gordin's plays were given, but the theatre 
had much the same fate that would befall a 
theatre up town which should play only the 
ideally best. It failed completely. Afttr that both 
Adler and Gordin were compelled to compromise. 
Adler is now associated with a company which 
presents every kind of play known to the Ghetto, 
and Gordin has had to introduce horseplay and 
occasional vaudeville and comic opera into his 
plays. Even the best of the Yiddish plays con- 
tain these excrescences. 

But both Adler and Gordin, while remaining 
practical men, with an eye to the box-office re- 
ceipts, are working to eliminate more and more 
what is distasteful to them and impertinent to 
art. A year ago last autumn Gordin succeeded 
in having his latest play, The Stattghier, per- 
formed without any vaudeville accompaniment. 
He deemed it a triumph, particularly as it was 
successful, and felt a debt of gratitude to Mrs. 
Liptzen, who produced the play without insisting 
on unworthy interpolations. 

Gordin now hopes that the days of compro- 
mise for him are past, and Adler expects to secure, 

174 



some day, a theatre in which he can successfully 
produce only the serious plays of Jewish life. 
But both these men are pessimistic about the 
future of dramatic art in the Ghetto. They feel 
not only the weight of the commerical spirit, but 
also the imminent death of their stage. For the 
Jews of the Ghetto as they become American- 
ized are liable to lose their instinctive Yiddish, 
and then there will be no more drama in that 
tongue. The only Yiddish stage, worthy of the 
name, in the world will probably soon be no more. 
Jacob Adler consequently regrets that his "jar- 
gon " confines him to the Bowery stage, and 
Jacob Gordin longs to have his plays translated 
and produced on the English stage. 

Mogalesco, the actor, who has, perhaps, the 
greatest talent of them all, whose dramatic art 
was born with the Yiddish stage, and who is 
equally happy in a comedietta by Latteiner or a 
character-play by Gordin, is, like the true actor, 
without ideas, but always felicitous in interpre- 
tation, and enthusiastically loved by the Jewish 
play-goers. He and Adler, if they had been for- 
tunate enough to have received a training con- 
sistently good, and had acted in a language of 
wider appeal, would easily have taken their 
places among those artistically honored by the 
world. Even as it is they have, with Gordin, 

175 



with Kessler, with Mrs. Liptzen, Mrs. Kalisch 
and the rest, the distinction of being prominent 
figures in the short career of the Yiddish stage, 
which, founded by Goldfaden in 1876, in Rou- 
mania, has received to-day, in New York, its 
highest and almost exclusive development. 



176 



Cha-pter Six 



Yiddish newspapers have, as compared with 
their contemporaries in the English language, 
the strong interest of great freedom of expres- 
sion. They are controlled rather by passion 
than by capital. It is theirjoy to pounce on 
controlling wealth, and to take the side of the 
laborer against the employer. A large propor- 
tion of the articles are signed, a custom in strik- 
ing contrast with that of the American news- 
paper; the prevalence of the unsigned article in 
the latter is held by the Yiddish journals to 
illustrate the employer's tendency to arrogate 
everything to himself, and to make the paper a 
mere organ of his own policy and opinions. The 
remark of one of the Jewish editors, that the 
"Yiddish newspaper's freedom of expression is 
limited by the Penal Code alone," has its relative 
truth. It is, of course, equally true that the new 
freedom of the Jews, who in Russia had no journal 
in the common Yiddish, runs in these New York 
papers into an emotional extreme, a license 

177 



which is apt to distort the news and to give over 
the editorial pages to virulent party disputes. 

Nevertheless, the Yiddish press, particularly 
the Socialistic branch of it, is an educative ele- 
ment of great value in the Ghetto. It has helped 
essentially to extend the intellectual horizon of 
the Jew beyond the boundaries of the Talmud, 
and has largely displaced the rabbi in the posi- 
tion of teacher of the people. Not only do these 
papers constitute a forum of discussion, but they 
publish frequent translations of the Russian, 
French, and German modern classics, and for 
the first time lay the news of the world before 
the poor Jewish people. An event of moment 
to the Jews, such as a riot in Russia, comes to 
New York in private letters, and is printed in 
the papers here often before the version " pre- 
pared " by the Russian Government appears in 
the Russian newspapers. Thus a Jew on the 
east side received a letter from his father in Rus- 
sia asking why the reserves there had been called 
out, and the son's reply gave him the first in- 
formation about the war in China. 

The make-up of the Yiddish newspaper is in a 
general way similar to that of its American con- 
temporary. The former is much smaller, how- 
ever, containing only about as much reading 
matter as would fill six or eight columns of a 



"down-town" newspaper. The sporting de- 
partment is entirely lacking, the Jew being 
utterly indifferent to exercise of any kind. They 
are all afternoon newspapers, and draw largely 
for the news upon the morning editions of the 
American papers. The staff is very limited, con- 
sisting of a few editors and, usually, only one 
reporter for the local news of the quarter. They 
give more space proportionately than any Ameri- 
can paper to pure literature — chiefly translations, 
tho there are some stories founded on the 
life of the east side — and to scientific articles of 
popular character. The interesting feature of 
these newspapers, however, consists in their 
rivalries and their differences in principle. This 
can be presented most simply in a short sketch 
of their history. 

THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNALS 

Yiddish journalism in New York began about 
thirty years ago, and continued in unimportant 
and unrepresentative newspapers until about 
twelve years ago, when the Tageblatt, the first 
daily newspaper, and the cArbeiterzeitung , an im- 
portant Socialistic weekly, now defunct, but 
from which developed the present Socialist dai- 
lies, came into existence. The Tageblatt, which 
has maintained its general character from the 

179 



beginning, is the most conservative, as well as 
the oldest, of the daily newspapers of the Ghetto. 
It is national and orthodox, and fights tooth 
and nail for whatever is distinctively Jewish in 
customs, literature, language, and religion. It 
hates the reform sects in religion and the Social- 
istic tendencies in politics and economics. It is 
called a "capitalist" paper by its opponents, and 
is so in the sense that it is more dependent upon 
its advertisements than the Socialistic papers, 
which are partly supported by frequent enter- 
tainments and balls, to which all their friends go. 
And yet how little capitalistic is even this paper 
is shown by the fact that while it takes a non- 
committal attitude towards strikes in the Ghetto 
it supports those which occur outside. 

Sympathetic with workingmen and not antag- 
onistic to the employers of the Ghetto, the Tage- 
5/^// conventionally unites all the Jewish interests 
it consistently can, and has admittedly the larg- 
est circulation of any daily paper in the Ghetto. 
The Socialists call it "bourgeois" as well as 
"capitalistic" (which is the most horrid of all 
words in the quarter). Some call it chauvinistic 
because of its strong Nationalist tendency, and 
fanatic because it upholds the religion of the 
Jews; the Jew who wants first of all to be an 
American and up-to-date hates the Tageblatt as 

i8o 



\ 



tending to strengthen the distinction between Jew 
and Gentile. This paper goes so far in its con- 
servatism that, according to its enemies, it con- 
demns all rabbis who mention the name of Christ 
in their sermons, and holds to a strict interpre- 
tation of Talmudic law in regard to habits of life. 
"It is only the old-fashioned greenhorns," said 
the editor of one of the other papers, "coming 
from the old country, who will stand for it." 

THE SOCIALIST PAPERS 

The Socialist weekly, the Arbeiierzeitanfff marked 
the beginning of the most vital journalism of the 
east side, and stood in striking contrast to the 
Tagcblati. In the circumstances attending its de- 
velopment into the two existing rival Socialistic 
papers, the VotOi>arts and the Abendbtatt* a picture 
of the progressive and passionate character of the 
Russian-Jewish Socialists of the Ghetto is pre- 
sented, and some of the most important and pic- 
turesque personages. The most educated and 
intelligent among the Jews of the east side 
speak Russian, and are reactionary in politics 
and religion. Coming from Russia, as they do, 
they have a fierce hatred of government and capi- 
talism, and a more or less Tolstoian love for the 

* Recently defunct— June, igoi. 

i8i 



peasant and the workingman. The purpose of 
the organizers of the Arbeiterzeitung Publishing 
Association was to educate the people, promul- 
gate the doctrines of Socialism, and be altogether 
the organ of the workman against the employer. 
From the outset, beginning in 1890, the cMrbeiter- 
zeitung was a popular and influential paper. 

All the older journals had affected a German- 
ized Yiddish, which the people did not under- 
stand ; but the new paper, aiming at the modern 
heart of the Ghetto, carried on its propaganda in 
the common jargon of the Jew, the pure Yid- 
dish ; and, growing enormously in circulation, 
forced the language down the throats of the con- 
servative journals. In this popular tongue, the 
Arbeiterzeitung carried on for five years a most 
energetic campaign for a broad Socialism, ad- 
mitting all allied movements in favor of common 
ownership, directing and encouraging strikes, 
printing popular scientific articles, realistic 
stories, dramatic criticisms, and expressing and 
leading generally the best intelligence of the 
Yiddish community. With the constituency of 
which this journal was the organ, Socialism had 
almost the force and passion of a religious move- 
ment. An example of the paper's power was in 
connection with the Bakers' Union, That or- 
ganization imposed a label on all bread made in 



the Ghetto, and insisted that all the bakers should 
handle only bread of that brand. The Arbeiter- 
zeitung supported the Union so effectively that no 
other bread could possibly be obtained in the 
quarter. At the first Yahresfest of the journal, 
Cooper Union overflowed with enthusiastic 
workingmen, and long lines of the excluded 
stretched out down the Bowery to Houston 
Street. 

J The man whose name is most intimately con- 
nected with the Arbeiterzeitung is its former editor, 
Abraham Cahan, now known outside of the 
Ghetto as a writer in English of novels and short 
stories of Jewish life. He is of the best type of 
the ethical agitator ; a convincing and impas- 
sioned speaker ; he has held hundreds of work- 
ingmen by his clear and strongly expressed 
ideas, whether written in his paper or spoken at 
nightly meetings in some poor hall on the east 
side, where the men gathered after the labors of 
the day. Twice he went abroad to speak at 
international labor conferences. At the same 
time that he supported the definite cause of the 
Social Democracy, he put the same energy and 
passion into the education of the people in scien- 
tific and literary directions. He spoke and 
wrote for directness, simplicity, and humanity. 
In art, therefore, the realistic school of Russian 

184 



writers, of whom in our generation there have 
been so many great men, received his fighting 
allegiance. For five years Cahan put all his in- 
telligence and devotion into this work, and the 
power of the Arbeiterzeitung was partly his power. 
To-day, in the Ghetto, where fierce jealousies 
are rampant, Cahan is admitted to be the man, 
among many men of energy, intelligence, and de- 
votion, who has wielded most influence in the 
community. 

A literary and dramatic event happened in 
1892 which showed the power of Cahan and his 
Socialist associates in influencing the taste of 
the Ghetto. It was the production of Gordin's 
drama Siberia. Up to that time, nothing but con- 
ventional opera, melodrama, and historical plays 
had been given on the Bowery, but the day 
after the performance of Siberia the Arbeiterzeitung 
contained a long review of the play by Cahan, 
welcoming it enthusiastically as an event break- 
ing the way for realistic art in the colony. Since 
then this type of play has taken a prominent 
place in the repertory at the Yiddish theatres. 
For five years the Arbeiterzeitung continued its 
influence, but then came a split among the Social- 
ists, which resulted in two daily papers — the 
Abendblatt and the Vorw'arts* 

Cahan, Miller and others of the men who had 
185 



started the Arbeiterzeitung gradually lost control 
through the share system which had been in- 
augurated. They desired to maintain a liberal 
policy towards all labor movements, and to allow 




BUYING A NEWSPAPER 

the literary and Socialistic societies to be repre- 
sented in the paper, but the other faction wanted 
the newspaper to be exclusively an organ of So- 
cialism in its narrow sense. The result was that, 

i86 



soon after the publication of the Arbeiterzeitang as 
the Daily Abendbtatt, Cahan resigned the editor- 
ship and turned disgusted to English news- 
papers and to realistic fiction, in which he was 
absorbed until recently. A few months ago he 
resumed the editorship of the Vor^arts after an 
absence of several years from participation in 
Yiddish journalism. Louis Miller, a witty and 
energetic Socialist and writer, who had from the 
first been active in the management of the 
weekly, was one of the most prominent of the 
men who continued the fight against the nar- 
rower Socialistic element — a fight which resulted 
in the establishment in 1897 of the other Social- 
ist daily now existing, the Vorwarts. 

These two papers were, until recently, when 
the Abendbtati died, bitter rivals. The Abendblatt 
was devoted to the interests of the Socialist La- 
bor Party while the Vorwarts supports in a gen- 
eral way the Social Democracy ; altho it is not 
so distinctively a party paper as was the Abend- 
blatt. The adherents of the latter paper looked 
upon the Vonvarts as unreliable and the Vorwarts 
people thought the Abendblatt intolerant. The 
Abendblatt prided itself on its uncompromising 
character, and the Vot^warts is content to adapt 
itself to what it deems the present needs of the 
Jewish community. Thus the 'Vonvarts is willing 

187 



to join hands with reform movements in gen- 
eral, with trades unions, etc., while the Abendbhtt 
stiffly demanded that allied organizations should 
enter the socialist camp. The triumph of the 
^orwaris was therefore a triumph of the more 
liberal spirits. 

Two other daily publications are Tuore dis- 
tinctively mere newspapers than the two Social- 
istic organs, and make no consistent attempt 
to influence public opinion, at least in the definite 
direction of a "movement." The Abend-Post 
seems to have no very distinctive policy or 
character; it is neither Socialistic nor conserva- 
tive Jewish ; the distinction it aims at is to be a 
newspaper simply, to reflect events and not to 
determine opinion. In the editor's words, the 
cAbend-'Post " is not chauvinistic, like the Tagebtatt; 
the Jew does not resound in it. It aims to Amer- 
icanize the Ghetto, and diminish or ignore the 
chasm between Jew and Gentile." The editor 
of one of the Socialist papers calls this sort of 
thing by another name. "The Abend-Post/' he 
said, "is an imitation of American yellow jour- 
nalism." A fifth daily, the Herald, is even less 
distinctive than the cAbend-Posi, It has no party 
and is not as sensational as the other. It might, 
perhaps, be called the Jewish "mugwump." 

Recently a sixth daily, The Jel^ish World, has 
i88 



been organized under favorable auspices. Its 
avowed policy is to bridge the chasm which ex- 
ists between sons and fathers in the Ghetto; to 
make the sons more Hebraic and the fathers 
more American ; the sons more conservative and 
the fathers more progressive. Connected with 
its management is H. Masliansky, one of the 
most impassioned orators of the Ghetto. 

The question of the circulation figures of these 
five dailies is a difficult one. About the only 
thing that seems certain is that the TagebUH 
leads in this respect. Even the editors of the 
other papers admit that, altho they differ as to 
the absolute figures. The editor of the Tage- 
btatt places his paper's circulation at 40,000, the 
c4bend-Post at 14,000, the Herald next, and the two 
Socialistic papers last, which ending is a felicitous 
consummation for the editor of the most conserv- 
ative newspaper in the Ghetto. The editor of 
the Abend-^osi says the Tageblati leads with a 
daily issue of about 30,000, the cAbend-Posi coming 
next with 23,700, the Herald and the Socialist 
papers stringing out in the rear. The editors of 
the Socialist sheets naturally give a somewhat 
different order. Mr. Miller of the Uorwarts puts 
the actual circulation of the Tageblati at about 
17,000 ; his own paper, the ^orwarts, next, with 
about 14,000 daily except on Saturday, the Jew- 

189 



ish Sunday, when the number ranges between 
20,000 and 25,000, owing to the fact that the con- 
servative newspapers (r. e,y those that are not 
SociaHstic) do not appear on that day. The cir- 
culation of the rival Socialistic paper, the (Abend- 
blati, he puts at about 8,000. In these figures 
there is no attempt at entire accuracy. 

THE ANARCHIST PAPERS 

There are several Yiddish weekly and monthly 
journals published in New York. The Tageblati, 
c/lbend-Posi and Herald have weekly editions, but 
by far the most interesting of the papers which 
are not dailies are the two Anarchistic sheets, 
the Freie cArbeiter-siimmej a weekly, and the Freie 
Gesellschaft, a monthly. 

Contrary to the general impression of the 
character of these people, in which bombs play a 
large part, the Anarchists of the Ghetto are a 
gentle and idealistic body of men. The ab- 
normal activity of the Russian Jews in this 
country is expressed by the Socialists rather 
than the Anarchists. The latter are largely 
theorists and aim rather at the education of the 
people by a journalistic exploitation of their gen- 
eral principles than by a warlike attitude to- 
wards specific events of the time. Their atti- 

190 



tude is not so partisan as that of the Socialists. 
They quarrel less among themselves, and are 
characterized by dreamy eyes and an unpractical 
scheme of things. They believe in non-resist- 
ance and the power of abstract right, and are 
trying to work out a peaceful revolution, main- 
taining that the violence often accompanying the 
movement in Europe is due to the fact that 
many Anarchists are passionate individuals who 
in their indignation do not live up to their essen- 
tially gentle principles. The Socialists aim at a 
more strictly centralized government, even than 
any one existing, since they desire the whole 
machinery of production and distribution to be in 
the hands of the community; the Anarchists de- 
sire no government whatever, believing that law 
works against the native dignity of the individ- 
ual, and trusting to man's natural goodness to 
maintain order under free conditions. A man's 
own conscience only can punish him sufficiently, 
they think. The Socialists go in vividly for poli- 
tics, while the Anarchists have nothing to do 
with them. The point on which these two par- 
ties agree is the common hatred of private prop- 
erty. 

The weekly Anarchistic paper, the Freie c/ir- 
beiter-stimme^ prints about 7,000 copies. Out of 
this circulation, with the assistance of balls, 

192 



entertainments, and benefits at the 
theatres, the paper is able to exist. 
It pays a salary to only one man, 
the editor, S. Janowsky, who re- 
ceives the sum of $13 a week. He 
is a little dark-haired man, with 
beautiful eyes, and soft, persuasive 
voice. He thinks that government 
is so corrupt that the Anarchists 
need do little to achieve their ends; 
that silent forces are at work which 
will bring about the great day of An- 
archistic communism. In his news- 
paper he tries to educate the common 
people in the principles of anarchy. 
The aim is popular, and the more in- 
telligent exploitation of the cause is 
left to the monthly. The Freigesellschaft, with the 
same principles as the Freie cArbeiter-stimme, has a 
higher literary and philosophical character. The 
editors and contributors are men of culture and 
education, and work without any pay. It is still 
gentler and more pacific in its character than the 
weekly, of whose comparatively contemporane- 
ous and agitatory method it disapproves calmly ; 
believing, as the editors of the monthly do, that 
a weekly paper cannot exist without giving the 
people something other than the ideally best. 

193 




S. JANOWSKY 



With reference to the ideally best, a number of 
serious, contemplative men gather in a base- 
ment opposite the Hebrew Institute, the head- 
quarters of the monthly, and there talk about 
the subjects often discussed within its pages, 
such as Slavery and Freedom, Darwinism and 
Communism, Man and Government, the Purpose 
of Education, etc., — any broad economic subject 
admitting of abstract treatment. 

The talk of these Anarchists is distinguished 
by a high idealism, and the unpractical and de- 
voted attitude. One of the foremost among 
them (they say they have no leaders, as that 
would be against individual liberty) is Katz, lit- 
erary editor of the ^or^arts^ a contributor to the 
Anarchistic monthly, a former editor of the An- 
archistic weekly, and a recently successful play- 
wright in the Ghetto. His play, the Yiddish 
Don Quixote^ was produced at the Thalia Theatre 
on the Bowery. Not since Gordin's Siberia, has a 
play aroused such intelligent interest. The hero 
is a Quixotic Jew, full of kindness, devotion, and 
love for his race and for humankind. "^ 

SOME PICTURESQUE CONTRIBUTORS 

There are many other picturesque and 
interesting men connected with these Yiddish 

194 



journals, either as edi- 
tors or contributors. 
Morris Rosenfeld, the 
sweat-shop poet, writes 
articles and occasional- 
ly poems for the Socialistic papers ; 
Abraham Wald, the vigorous and 
stormy young poet, contributes lit- 
erary and Socialistic articles three times 
a week to Vor%>arts; the editor of one of 
the conservative papers, distinguished for 
his logic and his clever business manage- 
ment, is interesting because of the facility 
with which he adapts his principles to the 
commercial needs of the moment. Atone 
time he was a Socialist, then became a 
Christian, then a Jew again simply, and now is a 
conservative Jew. Another editor remarked that 
he was a man of sense and logic. One of the 
Jews who writes for the Ghetto papers is A. 
Frumkin, who has the rare distinction of having 
been born and educated in Jerusalem. There 
he lived until he was eighteen, when he went to 
Constantinople and studied Turkish law; after- 
wards he journeyed to Paris, where he married, 
and then to New York, where he writes many 
articles in Yiddish about Jerusalem and Pales- 
tine, which are published largely in the 'Vo/k>arts* 

195 




ifMiitc^ 



KATZ 



He is a young man of about thirty, with a fresh, 
rosy look and a buoyant manner. He is an 
Anarchist, and his energetic bearing is in strong 
contrast to the pale cast of thought that marks 
his fellows, the intellectuals among the An- 
archists of New York. Other occasional or con- 
stant writers are the Hebrew poet Dolitzki, 
who is characterized in another chapter ; and 
the poets Morris Winchevsky and Abraham 
Sharkansky. 

These two men are in a class quite different 
from that of the four poets to whom a separate 
paper has been devoted. They are, as opposed 
to Rosenfeld, Zunser, Dolitzki and Wald, inter- 
esting rather for form than for substance. 
They are men with some lyric gift and a talent 
for verse, but are strong neither in thought nor 
feeling. Winchevsky is a Socialist, a man who 
has edited more than one Yiddish publication 
with success, of uncommon learning and cultiva- 
tion. In literary attempt he is more nearly like 
the ordinary American or English writer than 
the Jewish. Most of the Ghetto poets portray 
the dark and sordid aspect of their lives. Most 
of them do it with unhappy strength, certainly 
one of them, Rosenfeld, does it with genius. 
But Winchevsky attempts to give a bright pic- 
ture of things. He tries to be entertaining, and 

196 



heartfelt, sentimental and sweet. Truth is not 
so much what he attains as a little vein of senti- 
mental verse which is sometimes touched with a 
true lyric quality. 

Sharkansky can not be put in any intellectual 
category. He is a man of considerable poetic 
talent, but he seems to have little feeling and 
fewer ideas. There is no "movement" or ten- 
dency for which he cares. In character he is a 
business man, with a detached talent unrelated 
to the remainder of his personality. 

Philip Kranz and A. Feigenbaum, editors and 
writers of political editorials, are two 
of the most prominent men con- 
nected with the history of Yiddish 
journalism. They are men of energy 
and force and represent a large class 
of Jews interested in social science 
and political economy. A. Tan- 
nenbaum occupies a 
peculiar and interest- 
ing position as a writer 
for the newspapers. 
He writes very long 
novels, the plots of 
which are drawn from 
books in French, Ger- 
man or Russian. About 




A. FRUMKIN 



these plots he weaves incidents and characters 
from American history, and inserts popular ideas 
of science and philosophy. His aim is to educate 
the Ghetto by dishing up science and philosophy 
in a palatable form. D. Hermalin's distinctive 
character is that of a translator of foreign books 
into Yiddish. Swift, Tolstoi, de Maupassant, 
have been in part translated by him into the 
Ghetto's dialect. He, like some of the other men 
best known for more unpretentious work, is an 
author of very poor plays. David Pinsky, a writer 
for the Abendblatt, is very interesting not only as a 
writer of short sketches of literary value, in which 
capacity he is mentioned in another chapter, but 
also as a dramatic critic and as one of the more 
wide-awake and distinctively modern of the 
young men of Yiddish New York. He is so keen 
with the times that he looks even on realism with 
distrust. Even the great philosopher, the second 
Spinoza, a man highly respected in a professional 
way by eminent scientists of the day, Silverstein, 
is an occasional contributor to these interesting 
newspapers. 



i 



198 



CKsLpter Seven 



The Russian Jews of the east side of New 
York are, in proportion as they are educated, 
as I have said, realists in literary faith. Is it nat- 
ural ? Is it true to life ? they are inclined to ask 
of every piece of writing that comes under their 
eyes. As their lives are circumscribed and 
more or less unfortunate, their ideas of what 
constitutes the truth are limited and gloomy. 
Their criteria of art are formed on the basis of 
the narrow but intense work of modern Russian 
fiction. They look up to Tolstoi and Chekhov, 
and reject all principles founded upon more ro- 
mantic and more genial models. The simplicity 
of their critical ideals lends, however, to their 
intellectual lives a certainty which is striking 
enough when compared with the varied, waver- 
ing, ungrounded literary norms and judgments 
of the ordinary intelligent Anglo-Saxon. The 
lack of authoritative literary criticism in Amer- 
ica is partly due to the multiplicity of our classic 
models. With a simpler literature in mind the 

199 




Russian is more constantly 
able to apply a decisive test. 

The Russian Jew of culture 
when he comes to New York 
carries with him Russian ideals 
of literature. The best Yid- 
dish work produced in Amer- 
ica is Russian in principle. 
Many of the writers who pub- 
lish literary sketches in the 
newspapers of the Ghetto have 
written originally in the Rus- 
sian language, and know the Russian Jewish life 
better than the life of the Yiddish east side ; and 
even now they write mainly about conditions in 
Russia. Moreover, those who know their New 



A TYPE 
OF 

LABORING 
MAN 



York and its special Jewish life thoroughly and 
mirror it in their work are in method, tho not in 
material, Russian ; are close, faithful, unhappy 
realists. 

Whatever its form, however, a considerable 
body of fiction is published more or less regu- 
larly in the daily and weekly periodicals of the 
quarter which represents faithfully the life of the 
poor Russian Jew in the great American city. 
A " Gentile " who knew nothing of the New York 
Ghetto, but could read the Yiddish language, 
might get a good picture of something more than 
the superficial aspects of the quarter through 
the sketches of half a dozen of the more talented 
men who write for the Socialist newspapers. 
The conditions under which the children of 
Israel live in New York, their manners, problems 
and ideals, appear, if not with completeness, at 
least with suggestiveness, in these short articles, 
usually in fiction form, the best of them direct, 
simple and unpretentious, true to life in general 
and to the life of the Russian Jew in America in 
particular. The sad aspect of life predominates, 
but not through conventional sentimentality on 
the part of the writers, who are not aware that 
they are objects of possible pity. They merely 
tell without comment the facts they know. For 
the most part, those facts are gloomy and sor- 



did, often lightened, however, by the sense of 
the ridiculous, which seldom entirely deserts the 
Jew; and as likely as not rendered attractive by 
feeling and by beauty of characterization. 

SOME REALISTS 

S. Libin holds the place among prose writers 
that Morris Rosenfeld does among poets. 
Like Rosenfeld, he has been a sweat-shop 
worker, and, like him, writes about the sordid 
conditions of the life. The shop, the push- 
cart pedler and the tenement - house mark 
the range of his subjects ; but into these un- 
sightly things he puts constant feeling and an 
unfailing pathos and humor. As in the case of 
Rosenfeld, there are tears in everything he 
writes ; but, unlike Rosenfeld, he also smiles. 
He is a dark, thin, little man, as ragged as 
a tramp, with plaintive eyes and a deprecatory 
smile when he speaks. He is uncommonly 
poor, and at present sells newspapers for a 
living and writes an occasional sketch, for which 
he is paid at the rate of $1.50 or $2.00 a column 
by the Yiddish newspapers. He is able to pro- 
duce these little articles only on impulse ; and, 
consequently, altho he is one of the more prolific 
of the sketch-writers of the quarter, writes for 



relief rather than for income. Some >^a^, ' / 

of his contemporaries, with greater '— ^ 

constancy to commercial ideals, have 
partly given up unremunerative lit- 
erature for the position of newspaper 
hacks ; but Libin, remembering his 
sweat-shop days, does not like a j . . 

"boss," and is under the constant ■ '. 

necessity of relieving his feelings by 
his work. 

Libin lives with his wife and child 
in a tenement - house in Harlem, 
where he has continually before his s. libin 

eyes the home conditions which form the sub- 
ject of so many of his sketches. This little 
man, who looks like the commonest kind of a 
sweat-shop "sheeny," has the simplest and sin- 
cerest interest in domestic things. With great 
pride he pointed out to the visitor his one- 
year-old baby, who lay asleep on a miserable 
sofa, and talked of it and of his wife, who has 
also been a worker in the shops, with greater 
pleasure even than of his sketches, which, how- 
ever, he writes with joy and solace. He wept 
when he spoke of his child that died, and he has 
written poems in prose about it which weep, too. 
In the story of his life which he told, a common, 
ignorant Jew was revealed, a thorough product 

203 



of the sweat-shop — a man distinguished from 
the proletarian crowd only by a capacity for 
feeling and by a genuine talent. He was born 
in Russia twenty-nine years ago, and came to 
New York when he was twenty-two years old. 
For four years he worked as a cap-maker in 
shops which were then more wretched than 
they are now, from sixteen to seventeen hours a 
day. While at his task he would steal a few 
minutes to devote to his sketches, which he sent 
to the Arbeiter-Zeitung, Cahan recognized in 
Libin's misspelled, illiterate, almost illegible 
manuscript a quality which worthily ranked it 
with good realistic literature. Since then Libin 
has written extensively for the Zukanfi, a month- 
ly now defunct ; the Truth, published at one time 
by the poet Winchevsky in Boston, and for the 
New York daily ^orm)'drts, to which he still con- 
tributes. 

One of his sketches, the "New Law," about a 
column and a half long, expresses one aspect of 
the life led by a sweat-shop family. A tailor, 
going to the shop one morning, as usual, finds 
the boss and the other workers in a state of 
excitement. They have just heard about the 
new law limiting the day in the shop to ten 
hours and forbidding the men to do any work at 
home. This to them is a serious proposition, 

204 



for, as they are paid by the piece, they need 
many hours to make enough to pay their expen- 
ses. The tailor goes home earUer than usual 
that night, about ten o'clock, with the custom- 




HE IS TIRED, DISTRESSED AND IRRITATED 



ary bundle of clothes for his wife and children to 
work over. He is tired, distressed and irritated 
at the thought of the law. He finds his wife and 
ten-year-old daughter half asleep, as usual, but 

205 



yet sewing busily. They, too, are pale and 
tired, and near them on the lounge is a sleeping 
baby ; on the floor another. The little girl tries 
to hide her drowsiness from her father, and 
works more busily than ever. 

" Why are you back so early ? " asks his wife. 

"Pretty soon," he replies morosely, "I'll be 
back still earlier." 

"Is work slack again?" she asks, her cheek 
growing paler. 

" It's another trouble, not that," he says. " It's 
a new law, a bitter law." To his little daughter 
he adds: "Sleep, child, you will soon have time 
to sleep all day." 

His ignorant wife does not understand. 

" A new law ? What is that ? What does it 
mean ? " she asks. 

" It means that I can work only ten hours a 
day." 

Then they calculate how much money he can 
make in ten hours. Now he works nineteen 
hours, and they have nothing to spare. Under 
the new law he will be idle seven or eight hours 
a day. What will they do ? She thinks the 
boss must be responsible for the terrible ar- 
rangement, for does not all trouble come from 
the boss ? He is irritated by her simplicity, and 
she begins to weep. The little girl is overjoyed 

206 



at the thought that she will no longer have to 
work, but tries to conceal her pleasure. The 
laborer, moved by his wife's tears, endeavors to 
comfort her. 

"Ah," he says, "it's only a law ! Two years 
ago there was one like it, but the work went on 
just the same." But she continues to weep 
until their evening meal is ready, when the chil- 
dren are aroused from their sleep to obey " the 
supper law," Libin concludes in a spirit of tragi- 
comedy. 

"She Got Her Prize" is the title of a sketch 
in which unexhilarating comedy predominates. 
A laborer borrows some clothes to go to a 
party. In his absence his wife sells a number of 
rags to the old-clothes man, who innocently 
takes off her husband's only suit, carelessly put 
near the bundle he was to carry away. The 
husband does not notice the loss until the next 
day, when he has nothing to wear, cannot go to 
the shop, and so loses his job. "Betty" is the 
story of a girl who falls sick just before the 
day set for her wedding, and is taken to the 
hospital. The sketch pictures her in bed, read- 
ing a farewell letter from her lover who has 
deserted her. "Misery" is a prose poem, writ- 
ten by Libin when his child died. It has no 
plot, is merely the outcry of a simple, wounded 

207 



heart, telling of pain, longing and wonder at the 
sad mystery of the world. A pleasing rhythm 
runs through the Yiddish, and as the author 
read it aloud it seemed, indeed, like a "human 
document." "A Child of the Ghetto," one of 
the longest and most detailed of all, is full of the 
sad, tho gently satiric, quality of Libin's art. The 

author meets a 
pedler on Ludlow 
Street, who rec- 
ognizes him as 
the man who 
once saved his 
life by attracting 
to himself the 
snow -balls of a 
number of ur- 
chins who had 
been plaguing 
the pedler one 
cold winter 
day. They 
have a chat, 
and the 
author 
asks the 
ragged 
p u s h - 




&^4:m~ 



HE WAS BEWITCHED BY MATHEMATICS 



cart man how he is getting- on in the world. The 
pedler repHes that all of his class have their trou- 
bles^-the fruit quickly spoils, and the "bees" (po- 
licemen) come around regularly for some of the 
"honey." But he has a sorrow all to himself. 
His oldest son is a mathematician, and no good. 
When in the Jewish school in Russia the little 
fellow had learned to figure, and had been fig- 
uring ever since. His father had found, much to 
his disappointment, that in America also the 
boy would have to spend some time in school. 
The "monkey business " of learning had ruined 
the child. He was bewitched by mathematics 
and studied all day long. Sent successively to a 
sweat-shop, a grocery, to tend a push-cart, he 
proved thoroughly incapable of learning any 
trade ; was absent-minded and constantly calcu- 
lating, and always lost his job. And his old 
father bemoaned the misfortune all day long as 
he sold his bananas on Ludlow Street. 

Younger than Libin, less mature and less 
devoted to his art, with a very limited amount of 
work done ; simpler and more naive, if possible, 
than the older man, is Levin, a typesetter in the 
office of 'Vorrv'arts, His sketches are swifter and 
shorter than those of Libin, more effective and 
dramatic in form, with greater conventional relief 
of surprises and antitheses, but they have not so 

209 



much feeling and do not manifest so high a de- 
gree of realistic art. In contrast with Libin, who 
aims only for the quiet picture of ordinary life, 
Levin seeks the poignant moment in the flow of 
daily events. With more of a commercial atti- 
tude toward his work, Levin is, consequently, in 
more comfortable circumstances. Like Libin, he 
has worked in the shops, is uneducated and has 
married a tailor girl. Like Libin, again, he takes 
his subjects from the sweat-shop, the tenement 
house and the street. He is a handsome, ingen- 
uous young fellow of twenty-two years. Only 
eight of these have been spent in America, yet 
in this short time he has worked himself into the 
life of Hester and Suffolk streets to such an ex- 
tent that his short sketches give most faithful 
glimpses of various little points of human nature 
as it shapes itself on the east side. 

"Where Is She?" is a striking and typical 
incident in the career of a push-cart pedler. 
The itinerant seller of fruit is doing some hard 
thinking one day in Hester Street. He is wor- 
ried about something, and does not display the 
activity necessary for a successful merchant of 
his class. A vivid picture of the street is given 
— the passers-by, the tenement-houses, the heat. 
He knows that his business is suffering, but his 
thoughts dwell, in spite of himself, with his wife, 

2IO 



who is about to be confined, perhaps that very 
day. Yesterday she had done the washing, but 
on this day, for the first time, remained in bed. 
But he must go to the street, as usual. Other- 
wise, his bananas would spoil. He worries, too, 
about the condition of his children, left without 
the care of their mother. A woman crosses the 
street to inspect his bananas. Perhaps a buyer, 
he thinks, and concentrates his attention. She 
selects the best bananas, those that will keep 
the longest, and asks the price. " Two for a 
cent," he says. "Too much," she replied. "I 
will give you two cents for five." That is less 
than they cost him, and he refuses, and she goes 
away, and then he is sorry he had not sold. Just 
then his little daughter runs hatless, breathless 
up to him. "Mamma," she says, and weeps. 
She can say no more. He leaves her with the 
cart and runs to the tenement-house, finds his 
little boy playing on the floor, but his wife gone. 
He rushes distractedly out, looks up the stairs, 
and sees clothes hanging on a line on the roof, 
where he goes and finds his wife. She had left 
the bed in order to dry the wash of the day 
before, and was unable to return. He carries 
her back to bed and returns to his push-cart. 

" Put Off Again " is the story of a man and a 
girl who try to save enough money from their 

212 



work in the sweat-shop to marry. They need 
only a couple of hundred dollars for clothes and 
furniture, and have saved almost that sum when 
a letter comes from the girl's mother in Russia : 
her husband is dead after a long illness, and she 
needs money. The girl sends her $70, and the 
wedding is put off. The next time it is the girl's 
brother who arrives in New York and borrows 
$50 to make a start in business. When they 
are again ready for the wedding, and the day 
set, the young fellow quarrels with the sweat- 
shop boss, and is discharged. That is the 
evening before the day set for the wedding, and 
the young man calls on the girl and tells her. 
"We must put it off again, Jake," she says, "till 
you get another job." They cling to each other 
and are silent and sad. 

A sketch so simple that it seems almost child- 
ish is called "The Bride Weeps." It is a hot 
evening, and the people in the quarter are all 
out on their stoops. There are swarms of chil- 
dren about, and a bride and groom are embrac- 
ing each other and watching the crowd. " Poor 
people," says the bride reflectively, "ought not 
to have children." "What do you know about 
it ? " asks the groom, rather piqued. Their pleas- 
ure is dampened, and she goes to bed and wets 
her pillow with tears. 

213 



"Fooled," one of the most interesting of Le- 
vin's sketches, is the tale of an umbrella pedler. 
It is very hot in the Ghetto, and everybody is 
uncomfortable, but the umbrella pedler is more 
uncomfortable than any one else. He hates the 
bright sun that interferes with his business. It 
has not rained for weeks, and his stock in trade 
is all tied up in the house. He has no money, 
and wishes he were back in Russia, where it 
sometimes rains. He goes back to his apart- 
ment and sits brooding with his wife. "When 
are you going to buy us some candy, papa?" 
ask the children. Suddenly his wife sees a cloud 
in the sky, and they all rush joyfully to the 
window. The sun disappears, and the clouds 
continue to gather. The wife goes out to buy 
some food, the children say, " Papa is going to 
the street now, and will bring us some candy " ; 
and the pedler unpacks his stock of umbrellas 
and puts on his rubber boots. But the clouds 
roll away, and the hated sun comes out again, 
and the pedler takes off his boots and puts his 
pack away. " Ain't you going to the street, 
papa?" ask the children sorrowfully. "No," 
replies the pedler, " God has played a joke on 
me." 

Libin and Levin, altho they differ in the way 
described, are yet to be classed together in 

214 



essentials. They are both simple, uneducated 
men who write unpretentious sketches about a 
life they intimately know. They picture the 
conditions almost naively without comment and 
without subtlety. Libin, in a way to draw 
tears, Levin with the buoyant optimism of 
healthy youth, notice the quiet things in the 
every-day life of the Yiddish quarter that are 
touching and effective. 



A CULTIVATED LITERARY MAN 

Contrasting definitely with the sketches of 
Libin and Levin are those of Jacob Gordin, who, 
altho he is best known in the Ghetto as a play- 
wright, has yet written voluminously for the 
newspapers. Unlike the other two, Gordin is a 
well-educated man, knowing thoroughly several 
languages and literatures, including Greek, Rus- 
sian and German. His greater resources of 
culture and his sharper natural wit have made of 
him by far the most practised writer of the lot. 
With many literary examples before him, he 
knows the tricks of the trade, is skilful and 
effective, has a wide range of subjects and is full 
of "ideas" in the semi-philosophical sense. 
The innocent Libin and Levin are children in 
comparison, and yet their sketches show greater 

215 



fidelity to the facts than do those of the talented 
Gordin, who is too apt to employ the ordinary 
literary devices wherever he can find them, car- 
ing primarily for the effect rather than for the 
truth, and almost always heightening the color 
to an unnatural and pretentious pitch. In the 
drama Gordin's tendency toward the sensational 
is more in place. He has the sense of character 
and theatrical circumstance, and works along 
the broad lines demanded by the stage ; but 
these qualities when transferred to stories from 
the life result in what is sometimes called in the 
Ghetto "onion literature." So definitely theat- 
rical, indeed, are many of his sketches that they 
are sometimes read aloud by the actors to 
crowded Jewish audiences. Another point that 
takes from Gordin's interest to us as a sketch- 
writer is that his best stories have Russia rather 
than New York as a background ; that his 
sketches from New York life are comparatively 
unconvincing. He has a great contempt for 
America, which he satirizes in some of his 
sketches, particularly the political aspect, and 
intends some day to return to Russia, where he 
had a considerable career as a short-story writer 
in the Russian language. He is forty-nine years 
old, and, compared with the other men, is in 
comfortable circumstances, as he now makes a 

216 



good income from his plays, which grow in 
popularity in the quarter. Before coming to 
America he taught school and wrote for several 
newspapers in Russia, where he was known as 
" Ivan der Beissende," on account of the sharp 
character of his feuilletons. He came to this 
country in 1891, and shortly after, his first play, 
Siberia, was produced and made a great hit 
among the "intellectuals" and Socialists of the 
quarter. He began immediately to write for the 
Socialist newspapers, and also established a 
short-lived weekly periodical in the Russian 
language, which he wrote almost entirely him- 
self. 

"A Nipped Romance" is a story of two chil- 
dren who are collecting coals on a railway track. 
The boy of thirteen and the girl of eleven talk 
about their respective families, laying bare the 
sordidness, misery and vice in which their young 
lives are encompassed. They know more than 
children ought to know, and insensibly develop 
a sentimental interest in each other, when a 
train comes along and kills them. "Without 
a Pass," sometimes recited in the theatre by 
the actor, Moshkovitch, pictures with grue- 
some detail a girl working in the sweat-shop. 
The brutal doorkeeper refuses to let her go out 
for relief without a pass, and she dies of weak- 

217 



ness, hunger and cold. "A Tear," one of the 
best, is the tale of an old Jewish woman who 
has come to New York to visit her son. He is 
married to a Gentile, and the old lady is so much 
abused by her daughter-in-law that she goes 
back to Russia. The sketch represents her 
alone at the pier, about to embark. She sees 
the friends of the other passengers crowding the 
landing, but no one is there to say good-by to 
her ; and as the ship moves away a tear rolls 
down her cheek to the deck. " Who Laughs ? " 
satirizes the Americans who laugh at Russian 
Jews because of their beards, dress and accent. 
Another sketch denounces the " new woman " — 
she who apes American manners, lays aside her 
Jewish wig, becomes flippant and interested in 
"movements." Still another is a highly colored 
contrast between woman's love and that of less- 
devoted man. A story illustrating how the 
author's desire to make an effect sometimes 
results in the ludicrous is the would-be pathetic 
wail of a calf which is about to be slaughtered. 

AMERICAN LIFE THROUGH RUSSIAN 

EYES 

In connection with Gordin, two other writers of 

talent who work on the Yiddish newspapers may 

be briefly mentioned, altho one of them has writ- 

218 



ten as yet nothing and the other comparatively 
little that is based on the life of New York. 
They are, as is Gordin in his best sketches, 
Russian not only in form, but also in material. 
David Pinsky, who did general translating and 
critical work on the Abendbhti until a few months 
ago, when that newspaper died, has been in New 
York only a little more than a year, and has writ- 
ten very little about the local quarter. He has 
not even as yet approached near enough to the 
New York life to realize that there are any spe- 
cial conditions to portray. He is the author, how- 
ever, of good sketches in German and is some- 
what different in the character of his inspiration 
from the other men. They are close adherents 
of the tradition of Russian realism, while he is 
under the influence of the more recent European 
faith that disclaims all "schools" in literature. 
His stories, altho they remain faithful to the sad 
life portrayed, yet show greater sentimentality 
and some desire to bring forward the attractive 
side. 

The other of these two writers, B. Gorin, knew 
his Russian-Jewish life so intimately before he 
came to New York, seven years ago, that he 
has continued to draw from that source the 
material of his best stories ; altho he has written 
a good deal about Yiddish New York. His 

2 19 



sketches have the ordinary Russian merit of 
fidelity in detail and unpretentiousness of style. 
Compared with the other writers in New York, 
he is more elaborate in his workmanship. More 
mature than Libin, he is free from Gordin's 
artistic insincerity. He has been the editor of 
several Yiddish papers in the quarter, and has 
contributed to nearly all of them. 

Of Gorin's stories which touch the Russian- 
Jewish conditions in New York, " Yom Kippur" 
is one of the most notable. It is the tale of a pious 
Jewish woman who joins her husband in America 
after he has been there several years. The details 
of the way in which she left the old country, how 
she had to pass herself off on the steamer as the 
wife of another man, her difficulties with the 
inspecting officers, etc., give the impression of a 
life strange to the Gentile world. On arriving in 
America, she finds her husband and his friends 
fallen away from the old faith. He had shaved 
off his beard, had grown to be slack about the 
"kosher" preparation of food and the observ- 
ance of the religious holidays, no longer was 
careful about the morning ablutions, worked on 
the Sabbath and compelled her to take off the 
wig which every orthodox Jewish woman must 
wear. She soon fell under the new influence 
and felt herself drifting generally into the un- 

220 



godly ways of the New World. On the day of 
the great "White Feast " she found herself eat- 
ing when she should have fasted. On Yom Kip- 
pur, the Day of Atonement, the sense of her sins 
overpowered her quite. 

"Yom Kippur ! Now the children of Israel 
are all massed together in every corner of the 
globe. They are congregated in synagogues 
and prayer-houses, their eyes swollen with cry- 
ing, their voices hoarse from wailing and suppli- 
cating, their broken hearts full of repentance. 
They all stand now in their funeral togas, like a 
throng of newly arisen dead." 

She grows delirious and imagines that her 
father and mother come to her successively and 
reproach her for her degeneracy. In a series of 
frightful dreams, all bearing on her repentance, 
the atmosphere of the story is rendered so in- 
tense that her death, which follows, seems 
entirely natural. 

The theme of one of Gorin's longer stories on 
Jewish-American life is of a young Jew who had 
married in the old country and had come to New 
York alone to make his fortune. If he had re- 
mained in Russia, he would have lived happily 
with his wife, but in America he acquired new 
ideas of life and new ideals of women ; and, 
therefore, felt alienated from her when she joined 

221 



him in the New World. Many children came to 
them, his wages as a tailor diminished and his 
wife grew constantly less congenial. He re- 
mained with her, however, from a sense of duty 
for eleven years, when, after insuring his life, he 
committed suicide. 

A SATIRIST OF TENEMENT SOCIETY 

Leon Kobrin stands midway between Libin 
and Levin, on the one hand, and Gordin on 

the other. He carries his Russian traditions 
more intimately with him than do Libin and 
Levin, but more nearly approaches to a satu- 
rated exposition in fiction form of the life of Yid- 
dish New York than does Gordin. Unlike the 
latter, he has the pretence rather than the re- 
ality of learning, and the reality rather than the 
pretence of realistic art. Yet he never quite 
attains to the untutored fidelity of Libin. Many 
of his sketches are satirical, some are rather 
burlesque descriptions of Ghetto types, and 
some suggest the sad "problem" element which 
runs through Russian literature. He was born 
in Russia in 1872 of poor parents, orthodox 
Jews, who sent him to the Hebrew school, of 
which the boy was never very fond, but preferred 
to read Russian at night surreptitiously. He 

222 



found some good friends, who, as he put it, 
"helped me to the light through Ghetto dark- 
ness." Incidentally, it may be pointed out that 
the intellectual element of the Ghetto — the re- 
alists and Socialists— think that progress is 
possible only in the line of Russian culture, and 
that to remain steadfast to Jewish traditions is 
to remain immersed in darkness. So Kobrin 
stiuggled from a very early age to master the 
Russian language, and even wrote sketches in 
that tongue. He, like Gordin, refers to the fact 
of his being a writer in Yiddish apologetically as 
something forced upon him by circumstances. 
Unlike Gorin, however, he believes in the liter- 
ary capacity of the language, with which he was 
first impressed when he came to America in 1892 
and found stories by Chekhov translated by 
Abraham Cahan and others into Yiddish and 
published in the Arbeiterzeitung, It was a long 
time, however, before Kobrin definitely identified 
himself with the literary calling. He first went 
through a course somewhat similar to that of 
the boy mathematician in the sketch by Libin, 
described above. He tried the sweat-shop, but 
he was a bungler with the machines ; then he 
turned his hand with equal awkwardness to the 
occupation of making cigars; failed as distinctly 
as a baker, and finally, in 1894, was forced into 

223 



literature, and began writing for the cArbeiier- 
zeitung. 

One of Kobrin's sketches deals with a vulgar 
tailor of the east side, who is painted in the 
ugliest of colors and is as disagreeable an indi- 
vidual as the hottest anti-Semite could imagine. 
The man, who is the "boss" of a sweat-shop, 
meets the author in a suburban train, scrapes 
his acquaintance, fawns upon him, offers him a 
cigar and tells about how well he is doing in 
New York. In Russia, where he had made 
clothes for rich people, no young girl would 
have spoken to him because of his low social 
position ; but in the new country young women 
of good family abroad seek employment in his 
shop, and are often dependent on him not only 
for a living, but in more indescribable ways. 
Mr. Kobrin and his wife refer to this sketch as 
the "pig story." A subtler tale is the picture of 
a domestic scene. Jake has returned from his 
work and sits reading a Yiddish newspaper. 
His wife, a passionate brunette, is working 
about the room, and every now and then glances 
at the apathetic Jake with a sigh. She remem- 
bers how it was a year ago, when Jake hung 
over her, devoted, attentive ; and now he goes 
out almost every evening to the "circle" and 
returns late. She tries to engage him in con- 

224 



versation, but he answers in monosyllables and 
finally says he is going out, whereupon she 
weeps and makes a scene. " He is not the same 
Jake," she cries bitterly. After some words in- 
tended to comfort her, but really rubbing in the 
wound, her husband goes to the ''circle," and 
the wife burns the old love-letters one by one ; 
they are from another man, she feels, and are a 
torture to her now. As she burns the letters 
the tears fall and sizzle on the hot stove. It is 
a simple scene, but moving: what Mr. Kobrin 
calls "a small slice out of life." An amusing 
couple of sketches, in which satire approaches 
burlesque, represent the infelicities of an old 
woman from Russia who had recently arrived in 
New York. One day, shocked at her children's 
neglect of a religious holiday and at their general 
unholiness, she goes to visit an old neighbor, at 
whose house she is sure to have everything 
"kosher" and right. She has been accustomed 
to find the way to her friend by means of a 
wooden Indian, called by her a "Turk," which 
stood before a tobacco shop. The Indian has 
been removed, however, and she, consequently, 
loses her way. Seeing a Jew with big whiskers, 
who must, therefore, she thinks, be orthodox, 
she asks him where the "Turk" is, and repeats 
the question in vain to many others, among 

225 



them to a policeman, whom she addresses in 
Polish, for she thinks that all Gentiles speak 
that language, just as all Jews speak Yid- 
dish. On another occasion the old lady goes 
to the theatre, where her experiences are a 
Yiddish counterpart to those of Partridge at 
the play. 

Some of the best sketches from the life form 
portions of the plays which are produced at the 
Yiddish theatres on the Bowery. In the dramas 
of Gordin there are many scenes which far more 
faithfully than his newspaper sketches mirror 
the sordid life and unhappy problems of the poor 
Russian Jew in America; and the ability of the 
actors to enforce the theme and language by 
realistic dress, manner and intonation makes 
these scenes frequently a genuine revelation to 
the Gentile of a new world of social conditions. 
Kobrin and Libin, too, have written plays, very 
few and undramatic as compared with those of 
Gordin, but abounding in the "sketch " element, 
in scenes which give the setting and the milieu of 
a large and important section of humanity. 
Some of the plays of Gordin have been con- 
sidered in a previous chapter, and those of 
Kobrin and Libin merely add more material to 
the same quality which runs through their 
newspaper sketches. Libin is the author of two 

226 



plays, The Belated Wedding and A Vain Sacrifice, for 
which he was paid $50 apiece. They are each a 
series of pictures from the miserable Jewish life 
in the New York Ghetto. The latter play is the 
story of a girl who marries a man she hates in 
order to get money for her consumptive father. 
The theme of The Belated Wedding is too sordid to 
relate. Both plays are unrelieved gloom and 
lack any compensating dramatic quality. In 
Kobrin's plays — The East Side Ghetto, East Broad- 
<way and the Broken Chains — the problem element 
is more decided and the dramatic structure is 
more pronounced than in those of Libin. In 
East Broadway a young man and girl have been 
devoted to each other and to the cause of Nihil- 
ism in Russia, but in New York the husband 
catches the spirit of the American "business 
man " and demands from his father-in-law the 
money promised as a dot^ The eloquence of the 
new point of view is opposed to that of the old 
in a manner not entirely undramatic. 

The fact that there are a number of writers 
for the Yiddish newspapers of New York who 
are animated with a desire to give genuine 
glimpses of the real life of the people is partic- 
ularly interesting, perhaps, because of the light 
which it throws on the character of their Jewish 
readers and the breadth of culture which it 

227 



implies. Certainly, there are many Russian 
Jews on the east side who like to read anything 
which seems to them to be "natural," a word 
which is often on their lips. It would be mis- 
leading, however, to reach conclusions very 
optimistic in regard to the Ghetto Jews as a 
whole ; for the demand which makes these 
sketches possible is practically limited to the 
Socialists, and grows less as that political and 
intellectual movement falls off, under American 
influences, in vitality. To-day there are fewer 
good sketches published in the Yiddish news- 
papers than formerly, when the Arheiierzeitung 
was a power for social and literary improve- 
ment. Quarrels among the Socialists, resulting 
in many weakening splits, and the growth of a 
more constant commercial attitude on the part 
of the newspapers than formerly are partly re- 
sponsible for the change. The few men of talent 
who, under the stimulus of an editorial demand 
for sincere art, wrote in the early days with a 
full heart and entire conviction have now partly 
lost interest. Levin has given up writing alto- 
gether for the more remunerative work of a 
typesetter, Gorin has become largely a trans- 
lator and literary hack on the regular newspaper 
staff, and Gordin and Kobrin have turned their 
attention to the writing of plays, for which 

228 



there is a vital, if crude, demand. Libin alone, 
the most interesting and in a genuine way the 
most talented of them all, remains the poor- 
est in worldly goods and the most devoted to 
his art. 



229 



ChoLpter dght 



a jao\)elist 



Altho Abraham Cahan began his literary ca- 
reer as a Yiddish writer for the Ghetto news- 
papers his important work has been written and 
published in English. His work as a Yiddish 
writer was of an almost exclusively educational 
character. This at once establishes an impor- 
tant distinction between him and the Yiddish 
sketch-writers considered in the foregoing chap- 
ter. A still more vital distinction is that arising 
from the relative quality of his work, which as 
opposed to that of the Yiddish writers, is more 
of the order of the story or of the novel than of 
the sketch. Cahan's work is more developed 
and more mature as art than that of the other 
men, who remain essentially sketch-writers. 
Even in their longer stories what is good is the 
occasional flash of life, the occasional picture, 
and this does not imply characters and theme 
developed sufficiently to put them in the cate- 
gory of the novel. Rather than for the art they 
reveal they are interesting for the sincere way in 

230 



which they present a life intimately known. In 
fact the literary talent of the Ghetto consists 
almost exclusively in the short sketch. To this 
general rule Abraham Cahan comes the nearest 
to forming an exception. Even in his work the 
sketch element predominates ; but in one long 
story at least something more is successfully 
achieved ; in his short stories there is often 
much circumstance and development ; and he 
has now finished the first draft of a long novel. 
His stories have appeared from time to time in 
the leading English magazines, and there are 
two volumes with which the discriminating 
American and English public is familiar, Yekl 
and The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories. As 
well as his work Cahan's life too is of unusual 
interest. He had a picturesque career as a 
Socialist and an editor in the Ghetto. 

Abraham Cahan was born in Vilna, the capital 
of Lithuania, Russia, in i860. He went as a boy 
to the Jewish "chaider," but took an early and 
overpowering interest in the Russian language 
and ideas. He graduated from the Teacher's 
Institute at Vilna, and was appointed government 
teacher in the town of Velizh, Province of Vi- 
tebsk. Here he became interested, altho not 
active, in the anarchistic doctrines which filled 
the intellectual atmosphere of the day ; and, feel- 

231 



ing that his Hberty and activity were endangered 
by a longer sojourn in Russia, he came to Amer- 
ica in 1882, when a time of severe poverty and 
struggle ensued. 

From the first he, like most Russian Jews of 
intelligence, was identified with the Socialist 
movement in the New York Ghetto ; he threw 
himself into it with extraordinary activity 
and soon became a leader in the quarter. He 
was an eloquent and impassioned speaker, went 
twice abroad as the American-Jewish delegate 
to Socialist congresses, and was the most influ- 
ential man connected with the weekly cArbeiter- 
zeitung^ of which he became editor in 1893. This 
paper, as has been explained in a former chap- 
ter, for several years carried on an aggressive 
warfare in the cause of labor and Socialism, and 
attempted also to educate the people to an 
appreciation of the best realistic Russian wri- 
ters, such as Tolstoi, Turgenieff and Chekhov. 
It was under Cahan's editorship of this weekly, 
and also of the monthly Zukunft^ a journal of 
literature and social science, that some of the 
realistic sketch-writers of the quarter discovered 
their talent; and for a time both literature and 
Socialism were as vigorous as they were young 
in the colony. 

Literature, however, was at that time to 
232 



Cahan only the handmaiden of education. His 
career as an east side writer was that primarily 
of the teacher. He wished not merely to edu- 
cate the ignorant masses of the people in the 
doctrines of Socialism, but to teach them the 
rudiments of science and literature. For that 
reason he wrote in the popular "jargon," pop- 
ularized science, wrote Socialistic articles, ex- 
horted generally. Occasionally he published 
humorous sketches, intended, however, always 
to point a moral or convey some needed infor- 
mation. In literature, as such, he was not at 
that time interested as an author. It was only 
several years later, when he took up his English 
pen, that he attempted to put into practise the 
ideas about what constitutes real literature to 
which he had been trying to educate the Ghetto. 

The fierce individualism which in spite of 
Socialistic doctrine is a characteristic of the 
intellectual element in the Ghetto soon brought 
about its weakening effects. The inevitable oc- 
curred. Quarrels grew among the Socialists, the 
party was split, each faction organized a Socialist 
newspaper, and the movement consequently lost 
in significance and general popularity. In 1896 
Cahan resigned his editorship, and retired dis- 
gusted from the work. 

From that time on his interest in Socialism 
233 



waned, altho he still ranges himself under that 
banner ; and his other absorbing interest, real- 
istic literature, grew apace, until it now absorbs 
everything else. As is the case with many 
imaginative and emotional men he is predomi- 
nantly of one intellectual passion. When he was 
an active Socialist he wanted to be nothing else. 
He gave up his law studies, and devoted himself 
to an unremunerative public work. When the 
fierce but small personal quarrels began which 
brought about the present confused condition of 
Socialism in the Ghetto, Cahan's always strong 
admiration for the Russian writers of genius and 
their literary school led him to experiment in 
the English language, which gave a field much 
larger than the "jargon." Always a reformer, 
always filled with some idea which he wished to 
propagate through the length and breadth of the 
land, Cahan took up the cause of realism in 
EngHsh fiction with the same passion and en- 
ergy with which he had gone in for Socialism. 
He became a partisan in literature just as he 
had been a partisan in active life. He admired 
among Americans W. D. Howells, who seemed to 
him to write in the proper spirit, but he felt that 
Americans as a class were hopelessly "roman- 
tic," "unreal," and undeveloped in their literary 
tastes and standards. He set himself to writing 

234 



stones and books in English which should at 
least be genuine artistic transcripts from life, 
and he succeeded admirably in keeping out of 
his work any obvious doctrinaire element — which 
points to great artistic self-restraint when one 
considers how full of his doctrine the man is. 

Love of truth, indeed, is the quality which 
seems to a stranger in the Ghetto the great 
virtue of that section of the city. Truth, pleasant 
or unpleasant, is what the best of them desire. 
It is true that, in the reaction from the usual 
"affable" literature of the American book-mar- 
ket, these realists rather prefer the unpleasant. 
That, however, is a sign of energy and youth. 
A vigorous youthful literature is always more 
apt to breathe the spirit of tragedy than a liter- 
ature more mature and less fresh. And after all, 
the great passion of the intellectual quarter re- 
sults in the consciously held and warmly felt 
principle that literature should be a transcript 
from life. Cahan represents this feeling in its 
purest aspect ; and is therefore highly inter- 
esting not only as a man but as a type. This 
passion for truth is deeply infused into his liter- 
ary work. 

The aspects of the Ghetto's life which would 
naturally hold the interest of the artistic ob- 
server are predominatingly its characteristic 

235 



features — those qualities of character and condi- 
tions of social life which are different from the 
corresponding ones in the old country. Cahan 
came to America a mature man with the life of 
one community already a familiar thing to him. 
It was inevitable therefore that his literary work 
in New York should have consisted largely in 
fiction emphasizing the changed character and 
habits of the Russian Jew in New York ; de- 
scribing the conditions of immigration and de- 
picting the clash between the old and the new 
Ghetto and the way the former insensibly 
changes into the latter. In this respect Cahan 
presents a great contrast to the simple Libin, 
who merely tells in heartfelt passionate way the 
life of the poor sweat-shop Jew in the city, with- 
out consciously taking into account the relative 
nature of the phenomena. His is absolute work 
as far as it goes, as straight and true as an 
arrow, and implies no knowledge of other condi- 
tions. Cahan presents an equally striking con- 
trast to the work of men like Gordin and Gorin, 
the best part of which deals with Russian rather 
than New York life. 

If Cahan's work were merely the transcribing 
in fiction form of a great number of suggestive 
and curious "points" about the life of the poor 
Russian Jew in New York, it would not of course 

236 



have any great interest to even the cultivated 
Anglo-Saxon reader, who, tho he might find the 
stories curious and amusing for a time, would 
recognize nothing in them sufficiently familiar to 
be of deep importance to him. If, in other 
words, the stories had lacked the universal ele- 
ment always present in true literature they 
would have been of very little value to anyone 
except the student of queer corners. When 
however the universal element of art is present, 
when the special conditions are rendered sym- 
pathetic by the touch of common human nature, 
the result is pleasing in spite of the foreign 
element ; it is even pleasing because of that 
element ; for then the pleasure of easily under- 
standing what is unfamiliar is added to the charm 
of recognizing the old objects of the heart and 
the imagination. 

Cahan's stories may be divided into two gen- 
eral classes : those presenting primarily the spe- 
cial conditions of the Ghetto to which the story 
and characters are subordinate ; and those in 
which the special conditions and the story fuse 
together and mutually help and explain one 
another. These two — the "information" ele- 
ment and the "human nature" element— strug- 
gle for the mastery throughout his work. In 
the most successful part of the stories the 

237 



"human nature" element masters, without sup- 
pressing, that of special information. 

The substance of Cahan's stories, what they 
have deliberately to tell us about the New York 
Ghetto, is, considering- the limited volume of his 
work, rich and varied. It includes the descrip- 
tion of much that is common to the Jews of 
Russia and the Jews of New York — the picture 
of the orthodox Jew, the pious rabbi, the 
marriage customs, the religious holidays, etc. 
But the orthodox foreign element is treated 
more as a background on which are painted 
in contrasting lights the moral and physical 
forms resulting from the particular colonial 
conditions. The falling away of the children in 
filial respect and in religious faith, the consequent 
despair of the parents, who are influenced only 
in superficial ways by their new environment ; 
the alienation of "progressive" husbands from 
"old-fashioned" wives; the institution of "the 
boarder," a source of frequent domestic trouble; 
the tendency of the "new" daughters of Israel to 
select husbands for themselves in spite of ancient 
authority and the " Vermittler," and their ambi- 
tion to marry doctors and lawyers instead of 
Talmudical scholars ; the professional letter-wri- 
ters through whom ignorant people in the old 
country and their ignorant relatives here corre- 

238 



spond ; the falling-off in respect for the Hebrew 
scholar and the rabbi, the tendency to read in 
the Astor library and do other dreadful things 
implying interest in American life, to eat treife 
food, talk American slang, and hate being called 
a "greenhorn," i, e., an old-fashioned Jew; how 
a "Mister" in Russia becomes a "Shister" 
(shoemaker) in New York, and a ^'Shister" in 
Russia becomes a " Mister" in New York; how 
women lay aside their wigs and men shave their 
beards and ride in horse-cars on Saturday : all 
these things and more are told in more or less 
detail in Cahan's English stories. Anyone who 
followed the long series of Barge Office sketches 
which during the last few years Cahan has 
published anonymously in the Commercial Adver- 
tiser^ would be familiar in a general way with the 
different types of Jews who come to this country, 
with the reasons for their immigration and the 
conditions which confront them when they ar- 
rive. Many of these hastily conceived and writ- 
ten newspaper reports have plenty of life — are 
quick, rather formless, flashes of humor and 
pathos, and contain a great deal of implicit liter- 
ature. But the salient quality of this division of 
Cahan's work is the amount of strange and 
picturesque information which it conveys. 
Many of his more carefully executed stories 
239 



which have appeared from time to time in the 
magazines are loaded down with a like quantity 
of information, and while all of them have marked 
vitality, many are less intrinsically interesting-, 
from the point of view of human nature, than 
even the Barge Office sketches. A marked 
instance of a story in which the information 
element overpoweringly predominates is " The 
Daughter of Reb Avrom Leib," published in the 
Cosmopolitan Magazine for May, 1900. The tale 
opens with a picture of Aaron Zalkin, who is 
lonely. It is Friday evening, and for the first time 
since he left his native town he enters a syna- 
gogue. Then we have a succession of minutely 
described customs and objects which are inter- 
esting in themselves and convey no end of " local 
color." We learn that orthodox Jewish women 
have wigs, we read of the Holy Ark, the golden 
shield of David, the illuminated omud, the reading 
platform in the centre, the faces of the wor- 
shippers as they hum the Song of Songs, and 
then the cantor and the cantor's daughter. We 
follow the cantor in his ceremonies and prayers. 
Zalkin is thrilled by the ceremony and thrilled 
by the girl. But only a word is given to him 
before the story goes back to picturing the 
scene, Reb Avrom Leib's song and the actions 
of the congregation. In the second division of 

240 



the story Zalkin goes again the next Friday 
night to the synagogue, and the result is that 
he wants to marry the girl. So he sends a 
"marriage agent" to the cantor, the girl's 
father. Then he goes to "view the bride," and 
incidentally we learn that the cantor has two 
sons who are "American boys," and "will not 
turn their tongues to a Hebrew word." When 
the old man finds that Zalkin is a Talmudic 
scholar he is startled and delighted and wants 
him for a son-in-law. They try to outquote 
one another, shouting and gesticulating "in 
true Talmudic fashion." There is a short scene 
between the two young people, the wedding-day 
is deferred till the "Nine Days" are over, 
for "who would marry while one was mourning 
the Fall of the Temple?" And it is suggested 
that Sophie is not quite content. Then there 
is a scene where Zalkin chants the Prophets, 
where the betrothal articles, "a mixture of Chal- 
daic and Hebrew," are read and a plate is thrown 
on the floor to make a severance of the cere- 
mony "as unlikely as would be the reunion 
of the broken plate." Then there are more 
quotations from the cantor, a detailed picture of 
the services of the Day of Atonement, of the 
Rejoicing of the Law, blessing the Dedication 
Lights, The Days of Awe, and the Rejoicing of 

241 



the Law again. The old man's character is 
made very vivid, and the dramatic situation — 
that of a Jewish girl who, after the death of her 
father, marries in compliance with his desire — 
is picturesquely handled. But the theme is very 
slight. Most of the detail is devoted to making 
a picture, not of the changing emotions in the 
characters and the development of the human 
story, but of the religious customs of the Jews. 
The emphasis is put on information rather than 
on the theme, and consequently the story does 
not hold the interest strongly. 

Many of Cahan's other short stories suffer be- 
cause of the learned intention of the author. We 
derive a great deal of information and we gener- 
ally get the "picture," but it often requires an 
effort to keep the attention fixed on what is un- 
familiar and at the same time so apart from the 
substance of the story that it is merely subordi- 
nate detail. 

In these very stories, however, there is much 
that is vigorous and fresh in the treatment and 
characterization ; and a vein of lyric poetry is 
frequent, as in the delightful Ghetto Wedding, the 
story of how a poor young Jewish couple spend 
their last cent on an elaborate wedding-feast, 
expecting to be repaid by the presents, and thus 
enabled to furnish their apartment. The gifts 

242 



don't turn up, only a few guests are present, and 
the young- people, after the ceremony, go home 
with nothing but their enthusiastic love. The 
naii'vete and simplicity of the lovers, the implicit 
sympathy with them, and a kind of gentle 
satire, make this little story a gem for the poet. 
The Imported Bridegroom is a remarkable char- 
acter sketch and contains several very strong 
and interesting descriptions. Asriel Stroon is 
the central figure and lives before the mind of 
the reader. He is an old Jew who has made a 
business success in New York, and retired, when 
he has a religious awakening and at the same 
time a great longing for his old Russian home 
Pravly. He goes back to Pravly on a visit, and 
the description of his sensations the day he 
returns to his home is one of the best examples 
of the essential vitality of Cahan's work. This 
long story contains also a most amusing scene 
where Asriel outbids a famous rich man of the 
town for a section in the synagogue and tri- 
umphs over him, too, in the question of a son-in- 
law. There is in Pravly a "prodigy" of holiness 
and Talmudic learning, Shaya, whom Reb Lippe 
wants for his daughter, but Asriel wants him 
too, and being enormously rich, carries him off 
in triumph to his daughter in America. But 
Flora at first spurns him. He is a "greenhorn," 

243 



a scholar, not a smart American doctor such as 
she has dreamed of. Soon, however, Shaya, 
who is a great student, learns English and 
mathematics, and promises Flora to become a 
doctor. The first thing he knows he is a free- 
thinker and an American, and Flora now loves 
him. They keep the terrible secret from the old 
man, but he ultimately sees Shaya going into 
the Astor Library and eating food in a treife 
restaurant. His resentment is pathetic and 
intense, but the children marry, and the old man 
goes to Jerusalem with his faithful servant. 

The book, however, in which there is a perfect 
adaptation of "atmosphere " and information to 
the dramatic story is YekL In this strong, fresh 
work, full of buoyant life, the Ghetto characters 
and environment form an integral part. 

Yekl indeed ought to be well known to the 
English reading public. It is a book written 
and conceived in the English language, is essen- 
tially idiomatic and consequently presents no 
linguistic difficulties. It gives a great deal of 
information about what seems to me by far the 
most interesting section of foreign New York. 
But what ought to count more than anything 
else is that it is a genuine piece of literature ; 
picturing characters that live in art, in an envi- 
ronment that is made real, and by means of a 

244 



story that is vital and significant and that never 
flags in interest. In its quahty of freshness and 
buoyancy it recalls the work of Turgenieff. 
None of Cahan's later work, tho most of it has 
vital elements, stands in the same class with 
this fundamentally sweet piece of literature. It 
takes a worthy place with the best Russian 
fiction, with that school of writers who make life 
actual by the sincere handling of detail in which 
the simple everyday emotions of unspoiled hu- 
man nature are portrayed. The English classic 
novel, greatly superior in the rounded and con- 
templative view of life, has yet nothing since 
Fielding comparable to Russian fiction in vivid 
presentation of the details of life. This whole 
school of literature can, I believe, be compared 
in quality more fittingly with Elizabethan drama 
than anything which has intervened in English 
literature ; not of course with those maturer 
dramas in which there is a great philosophical 
treatment of human life, but in the lyric fresh- 
ness and imaginative vitality which were com- 
mon to the whole lot of Elizabethan writers. 

Yekt is alive from beginning to end. The 
virtuosity in description which in Cahan's work 
sometimes takes the place of literature, is here 
quite subordinate. Yekl is a sweat-shop Jew 
in New York who has left a wife and child in 

245 



Russia in order to make a little home for them 
and himself in the new world. In the early part 
of the book he is becoming an "American" Jew, 
making a little money and taking a great fancy 
to the smart Jewish girl who wears a "rakish " 
hat, no wig, talks " United States," and has a 
profound contempt for the benighted pious 
"greenhorns " who have just arrived. A sweat- 
shop girl named Mamie moves his fancy deeply, 
so that when the faithful wife Gitl and the little 
boy Yossele arrive at the Barge Office there is 
evidently trouble at hand. At that place Yekl 
meets them in a vividly told scene — ill-concealed 
disquiet on his part and naive alarm at the situ- 
ation on hers. Gitl's wig and her subdued, old- 
fashioned demeanor tell terribly on Yekl's 
nerves, and she is shocked by everything that 
happens to her in America. Their domestic 
unhappiness develops through a number of char- 
acteristic and simple incidents until it results in 
a divorce. But by that time Gitl is becoming 
"American " and it is obvious that she is to be 
taken care of by a young man in the quarter 
more appreciative than Yekl. The latter finds 
himself bound to Mamie, the pert "American" 
girl, and as the book closes is in a fair way to 
regret the necessity of giving up his newly ac- 
quired freedom. This simple, strong theme is 

246 




A SWEAT-SHOP GIRL MOVES HIS FANCY DEEPLY 



treated consistently in a vital presentative way. 
The idea is developed by natural and constant 
incident, psychological or physical, rather than 
by talk. Every detail of the book grows nat- 
urally out of the situation. 

"Unpleasant" is a word which many an 
American would give to Yekl on account of its 
subject. Strong compensating qualities are nec- 
essary to induce a publisher or editor to print 
anything which they think is in subject disagree- 
able to the big body of American readers, most 
of whom are women. Without attempting to 
criticise the "voice of the people," it may be 
pointed out that there are at least two ways in 
which a book maybe "unpleasant." It may be 
so in the formal theme, the characters, the re- 
sult — things may come out unhappily, vice tri- 
umphant, and the section of life portrayed may 
be a sordid one. This is the kind of unpleasant- 
ness which publishers particularly object to ; and 
in this sense Fe^/may fairly be called "unpleas- 
ant." Turgenieff's Torrents of Spring is also in 
this sense "unpleasant," for it tells how a young 
man's sincere and poetic first love is turned to 
failure and misery by the illegitimate temporary 
attraction of a fascinating woman of the world. 
But Turgenieffs novel is nevertheless full of 
buoyant vitality, full of freshness and charm, of 

248 



youth and grace, full of life-giving qualities ; be- 
cause of it we all may live more abundantly. 
The same may be said of many another book. 
When there is sweetness, strength and early 
vigor in a book the reader is refreshed notwith- 
standing the theme. And it is noticeable that 
youth is not afraid of " subjects." 

Another way in which a book may be "un- 
pleasant" is in the quality of deadness. Many 
books with pleasant and moral themes and 
endings are unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. 
Even a book great in subject, with much philos- 
ophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to 
the vital qualities, to the effects of spring, to 
the joy in mere physical life, which are so 
marked and so genuinely invigorating in the 
best Russian fiction. The extreme of this kind 
of unpleasantness is shown in the case of some* 
modern Frenchmen and Italians ; not primarily 
in the theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, 
of hope ; in a sodden maturity, often indeed 
combined with great qualities of intellect and 
workmanship, but dead to the little things of 
life, dead to the feeling of spring in the blood, to 
naive readiness for experience. An American 
who is the antithesis of this kind of thing is 
Walt Whitman. His quality put into prose is 
what we have in the best Russian novels. In 

249 




^I'ZUm 



GITL 



the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, 
too, it cannot be applied to Yekl; for Yekl is 
youthful and vital. There is buoyant spring in 
the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it 
may be. 

Apropos of Cahan's love of truth, and that word 
"unpleasant," a discussion which took place a 
few years ago on the appearance of Zangwill's 
play. The Children of the Ghetto, is illuminative. 
That poetic drama represented the life of the 
poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy and truth ; but 
for that very reason it was severely criticised by 
some uptown Israelites. Many of these, no 
doubt, had religious objections to a display on 
the stage of those customs and observances of 
their race which touched upon the "holy law." 
But some of the rich German Jews, practically 
identified with American life, and desiring for 
practical and social purposes to make little of 
their racial distinction, deprecated literature 
which portrayed the life of those Jews who still 
have distinctively national traits and customs. 
Then, too, there is a tendency among the well- 
to-do American Jews to look down upon their 
Ghetto brethen, to regard the old customs as 
benighted and to treat them with a certain con- 
tempt ; altho they spend a great deal of chari- 
table money in the quarter. Feeling a little 

251 



ashamed of the poor Russian east side Jew, they 
object to a serious literary portrayal of him. 
They want no attention called to what they 
deem the less attractive aspects of their race. 
An uptown Jewish lady, on the appearance in a 
newspaper of a story about east side Jewish 
life, wrote a protesting letter to the editor. She 
told the writer of the sketch, when he was sent 
to see her, that she could not see why he didn't 
write about uptown Jews instead of sordid east 
side Jews. The scribe replied that he wrote of 
the Ghetto Jew because he found him interest- 
ing, while he couldn't see anything attractive or 
picturesque about the comfortable Israelite up- 
town. 

Abraham Cahan's stories have been subjected 
to criticism inspired by the same spirit. Feeling 
the charm of his people he has attempted to 
picture them as they are, in shadow and light ; 
and has consequently been accused of betraying 
his race to the Gentiles. 

The attitude of the east side Jews towards 
writers like Zangwill and Cahan is in refreshing 
contrast. The Yiddish newspapers were enthu- 
siastic about Children of the Ghetto^ in which they 
felt the Jews were truthfully and therefore sym- 
pathetically portrayed. In the literary sketches 
and plays now produced in considerable numbers 

252 



in the "jargon," a great pride of race is mani- 
fest. The writers have not lost their self-re- 
spect, still abound in their own sense and are 
consequently vitally interesting. They are full 
of ideals and enthusiasm and do not object to 
what is "unpleasant" so strenuously as do their 
uptown brethren. 



253 



CKoLpter Nine 

C|)e iouns ^rt anti its 
exponents 

On Hester Street, east of the Bowery, the poor 
Jew is revealed in many a characteristic way. It 
is the home of the sweat-shop, of the crowded 
tenement-house. Old pedlers, as ragged as the 
poorest beggars, stand on street corners. In 
long uninterrupted lines are the carts — contain- 
ing fruit, cake, dry goods, fish, everything that 
the proletarian Jew requires. Behind these 
tower the crowded tenement-houses, with fire- 
escapes for balconies. Through the middle of 
the street constantly moves a mass of people. 
No vehicle can go rapidly there, for the thor- 
oughfare is literally alive. In the least crowded 
part of the day, however, tattered little girls 
may sometimes be seen dancing with natural 
grace to the music of a hand-organ, the Italian 
owner of which for some strange reason has 
embedded himself in the very heart of poverty. 
Between the lumbering wagons which infest the 
street at the less busy part of the day these little 

254 



children wonderfully sway and glide and consti- 
tute the only gladsome feature of the scene. 
Just as Canal Street, with its cafes where the 
poets, Socialists, scholars and journalists meet, 
is the mind of the Ghetto, so Hester Street 
represents its heart. This picturesque street 
has recently become the study of several young 
Jewish artists. 

The last few years have brought the earliest 
indications of what may develop into a charac- 
teristic Ghetto art. In the course of their long 
civilization the Jews have never developed a 
national plastic art. Devoted to the things of 
the spirit, in an important period of their history 
in conflict with the sensuous art of the Greeks, 
they have never put into external forms the 
heart of their life. There have been occasional 
painters and sculptors among them, but these 
have worked in line with the Gentiles, and have 
in no way contributed to a typical or national 
art. With the slackening of the Hebraic reli- 
gion, however, which prohibits images in the 
temple — that fertile source of inspiration in 
Christian art — the conditions have been more 
favorable, and the beginning of a distinctive 
Ghetto art has already made its appearance in 
New York. 

On the corner of Hester and Forsyth streets 

255 



is a tumble-down rickety building. The stairs 
that ascend to the garret are pestiferous and 
dingy. In what is more like a shed than a 
room, with the wooden ribs of the slanting roof 
curtailing the space, is the studio of an east side 
artist. A miserable iron bedstead occupies the 
narrow strip of floor beneath the descending 
ceiling. There is one window, which commands 
a good view of the pushcart market in Hester 
Street. Near the window is a diminutive oil- 
stove, on which the artist prepares his tea and 
eggs. On a peg on the door hang an old mack- 
intosh and an extra coat — his only additional 
wardrobe. About the narrow walls on the three 
available sides are easels, and sketches and 
paintings of Ghetto types. 

Jacob Epstein, the name of the artist, has a 
melancholy wistful face. He was born in the 
Ghetto twenty years ago, of poor Jews, who 
were at first tailors and afterwards small trades- 
people, and who had emigrated from Poland. 
He went to the public schools until he was 
thirteen years old. Since then he has worked 
at various jobs. Until recently he was an in- 
structor in the boys' out-door gymnasium near 
the corner of Hester and Essex streets. For 
one summer, in order to get a vacation, he 
became a farm laborer. His art education as 

256 



well as his education in general is slight, consist- 
ing of two terms at the Art Students' League. 
But for so young a man his intellectual, as well 
as his artistic activity has been considerable. 
He belongs to a number of debating societies, 
and is now hesitating in his mind whether to 
become a Socialist or an Anarchist, altho he is 
tending towards a humane socialism. 

Two things, however, he seems definitely to 
have settled— that he will devote himself to his 
art, and that that art shall be the plastic pictur- 
ing of the life of his people in the Ghetto. He 
seems to rejoice at having lost his various pot- 
boiling positions. 

" I was not a gymnast," he said cheerfully, 
explaining why he left the last one, " and now 
they have a gymnast." 

Now he lives alone on his beloved Hester 
Street and the studio, where he sleeps and eats. 
For that modest room he pays $4 a month, and 
as he cooks his own meals, $12 a month is quite 
sufficient to satisfy all his needs. This amount 
he can usually manage to make through the 
sale of his sketches ; but when he does not he 
"goes to bed," as he puts it, and lies low until 
one of his various little art enterprises brings 
him in a small check. Withal, he is very happy, 
altho serious, like his race in general ; and full of 

257 



idealism and ambition. On one occasion the 
idea occured to him and to his friend, Bernard 
Gussow, that men ought to Hve closer to nature 
than they can in the Ghetto. It was in the 
winter time that they were filled with this con- 
viction, but they nevertheless packed off and 
hired a farmhouse at Greenwood Lake, and 
stayed there the whole winter. When their 
money gave out they cut ice in the river to pay 
the rent. 

"We enjoyed it very much," said Epstein, 
"but there were no artistic results. The coun- 
try, much as I love it, is not stimulating. Clouds 
and trees are not satisfying. It is only in the 
Ghetto, where there is human nature, that I 
have ideas for sketches." 

With a kind of regret the artist spoke of the 
beauty of Winslow Homer's landscape. He 
called it "epic," and was filled with sorrow that 
such an art could not be in the Ghetto. 

"There is no nature in the sweat-shop," he 
said, "and yet it is there and in the crowded 
street that my love and my imagination call me. 
It is only the minds and souls of my people that 
fill me with a desire to work." 

It is this ambition which makes Jacob Epstein 
and the other young artists to be mentioned of 
uncommon representative interest. Epstein is 

258 



\ 



filled with a melancholy love of his race, and his 
constant desire is to paint his people just as 
they are : to show them in their suffering pic- 
turesqueness. So he goes into the sweat-shop 
and sketches, induces the old pedlers of Hester 
Street to pose in his studio, and draws from his 
window the push-carts and the old women in 
the street. It is thus a characteristic Ghetto 
art, an art dealing v/ith the peculiar types of 
that Jewish community, that Epstein's interest 
leads to ; a national plastic art, as it were, on a 
small scale. 

In the studio and at an exhibition at the He- 
brew Institute Epstein had two years ago a 
number of sketches and a few paintings — the 
latter very crude as far as the technique of color 
is concerned, and the sketches in charcoal rough 
and showing comparatively slight mastery of 
the craft. But, particularly in the sketches, 
there is character in every one, and at once a 
sympathetic and a realistic imagination. He 
tells the truth about the Ghetto as he sees it, 
but into the dark reality of the external life he 
puts frequently a melancholy beauty of spirit. 
Portraits of old pedlers, roughly successful as 
Ghetto types, in order to retain whom as models 
the artist was frequently forced to sing a song, 
for the pedlers have a Jewish horror of the 

259 





A LITTLE GIRL OF 
HESTER STREET 



image, and it is difficult to get them to 
pose ; one of them with an irregular, 
blunted nose and eyes sad and plaintive, 
but very gentle ; an old Jew in the syna- 
gogue, praying *'Holy," Holy"; many 
sweat-shop scenes, gaunt figures half- 
dressed, with enormously long arms and 
bony figures ; mothers working in the 
shops with babies in their arms ; one 
woman, tired, watching for a moment her 
lean husband working the machine — that 
machine of which Morris Rosenfeld sings 
V so powerfully in " The Sweat-Shop " ; a 
woman with her head leaning heavily on 
her hands ; Hester Street market scenes, 
with dreary tenement-houses — a kind of 
prison wall — as background ; one pedler with a 
sensitive face — a man the artist had to catch at 
odd times, surreptitiously, for, religious to an ex- 
treme, the old fellow would hastily trundle off 
whenever he saw Epstein. 

A characteristic of this young artist's work is 
the seriousness with which he tries to get the 
type as it is ; the manifest love involved in the 
way it takes his imagination. With his whole 
soul he hates caricature of his race. Most of 
the magazine illustrations of Ghetto characters 
he finds distorted and untrue, many of them, 

260 



however, done with a finish of technique that he 
envies. A big and ugly nose is not the enthusi- 
astic artist's idea of what constitutes a down- 
town Jew. The Jew, to him, is recognized 
rather by the pecuHar melancholy of the eyes. 
In the nose he sees nothing particularly typical 
of the race. It is a forcible illustration of how, 
while really remaining faithful to the external 
type, his love for the race leads him to emphasize 
the spiritual and humane expressiveness of the 
faces about him ; and so paves the way to an art 
imaginative as well as typical, not lacking even 
in a certain ideal beauty. 

Bernard Gussow, Epstein's friend and fellow- 
worker in the attempt to found a distinctive 
Ghetto art, is in a still earlier stage of develop- 
ment. His essays in the plastic reproduction of 
Hester Street types are not yet as humanly 
interesting as those of the younger man, who, 
however, has been working longer and more 
assiduously. It is only for the past year or two 
that Gussow has definitely espoused this cause. 

Unlike Epstein he was not born in New York. 
The town of Slutzk, in the government of 
Ulinsk, Russia, is his birthplace, where he 
stayed until he was eleven years old. His father 
is a teacher of Hebrew, and young Gussow con- 
sequently received a much better education than 

261 



Epstein ; and also became much more familiar 
with the religious life of the Orthodox Jews. 
For that reason Epstein urges his friend to take 
the New York Orthodox synagogue and the 
domestic life of the religious Jew as his dis- 
tinctive field in the great work in hand. For 
this, too, Gussow hopes, but in the present con- 
dition of his technique he limits himself to Hes- 
ter Street scenes. 

In New York Gussow continued to build up an 
education uncommonly good in the Ghetto. He 
went through the High School, entered the City 
College, which he left for the Art School, and 
spent one season at the League and two at the 
Academy of Design. He has for many years 
given lessons in English ; to which occupation 
he, unlike his more emotional friend, prudently 
holds on. But Gussow, also, is deeply if not 
emotionally interested in the life of the Ghetto, 
and in a broader if less intense form than is 
Epstein. With the contemporary Yiddish liter- 
ature and journalism of New York he is well 
acquainted. His mind is more conservative and 
judicial than that of Epstein ; but his sketches 
lack, at present at least, the touch of strong 
sympathy and imagination which is marked in 
the art of the younger man. 

Gussow lives with his father's family, where 
262 



he keeps his sketches — but to work, he goes to 
a room on the corner of Hester and Essex 
streets occupied by a poor Jewish family. Here 
the artist sits by the window and watches the 
poor and picturesque scenes in the big push-cart 
market directly beneath him. The subjects of 
his sketches are roughly the same as those of 
Epstein, altho he draws rather more from the 
street and Epstein from the sweat-shop. Groups 
standing about the push-carts, examining goods 
and bargaining ; an old woman with a cheese in 
her hand, and an enormous nose (which Epstein 
reproachfully calls a caricature); several sketches 
representing men or women holding eggs to the 
sun, as a test preliminary to buying ; carpenters 
waiting on the corner near the market for a job ; 
an old Jew critically examining apples ; a roughly 
indicated, rather attractive Jewish girl ; a woman 
standing by a push-cart counting her money ; a 
confused Hester Street crowd, walled in by the 
lofty tenement-houses ; a wall-painter with an 
interesting face, who peddles horse-radish when 
not occupied with painting; a pedler out of work, 
just from the hospital, his beard straggling in 
again, with the characteristic sad eyes of his 
race ; this rather small list comprises the greater 
part of Gussow's work, and most of it is of a 
distinctly sketchy nature. 

264 



"You see," said Epstein sympathetically, 
" Bernard has until recently been working for 
the tenement-house committee, and has only 
just got away from his job." Both of these 
young men seem to think it a piece of good luck 
when they are discharged by their employers. 

These artists both recognize that the distinct- 
ive Ghetto art is in its earliest stage ; and that 
whatever has yet been done in that direction is 
technically very imperfect. But they call atten- 
tion even to the crayon art stores of the Ghetto as 
crudely pointing in the right direction. In those 
chromos, which contain absolutely no artistic 
quality, is represented, nevertheless, the religious 
and domestic life of the Jews and their physical 
types. And whatever art there is at present is 
supported by the popularity with the people of 
this crayon work. On the basis of that the 
artist proper may work out the type into more 
truly interpretative forms. 

For this young art, the object of which is to 
give a realistic picture of the life of the Ghetto, it 
is easy to conceive an unduly sentimental inter- 
est. It is not unnatural in this time of great 
attention to east side charitable work to give 
greater value than it deserves to an art which 
represents the sordidness and the pathos of that 
part of the city. Against this attitude, which 

265 



they also call sentimental, Epstein and Gussow 
earnestly protest, and maintain that unless the 
Ghetto art becomes some day technically excel- 
lent it will have no legitimate value. They want 
it judged on the same basis that any other art is 
judged ; and they are filled with the faith, or at 
least the enthusiastic Epstein is, that the time 
will come when the artists of the Ghetto will paint 
typical Jewish life, and paint it technically well. 

It is true, of course, that the ultimate value of 
this little art movement in the Ghetto will de- 
pend upon how well the attempt to paint the 
life is eventually carried out. But, nevertheless, 
even if nothing comes of it, it is important as 
suggesting an interesting departure from what 
is the prevailing limitation of American art. In 
Epstein's work something of the typical life of a 
community is expressed ; of what American 
painter from among the Gentiles can this be 
said ? Where is the typical, the nationally 
characteristic, in our art ? Our best painters 
experiment with all kinds of subjects ; they put 
talent, sometimes genius, into their work, but at 
the basis of it there is no simple presentation of 
well-recognized and deeply felt national or even 
sectional life ; merely essays in art, of more or 
less skill, showing no warm interest in any one 
kind of life. 

266 



There are many other artists, besides these 
two, in the Ghetto, some of whom also occasion- 
ally paint a distinctive Ghetto type. But for the 
most part, trained as they have been in the up- 
town art schools, they experiment with all sorts 
of subjects in the approved American style. 
They paint girls in white and girls in blue, etc., 
as Epstein expressed it scornfully ; and put no 
general Ghetto quality into their work. They 
do not seem deeply interested in anything except 
painting. Many of them are technically better 
educated than Epstein and Gussow ; tho it is 
probably safe to say that no one of them has the 
sympathetic imagination of Epstein. It is to 
this eclectic, experimental tendency of the ar- 
tists in the Ghetto in general that Epstein and 
Gussow present a contrast — in their love of their 
people and their desire to paint them as they are, 

A typical representative of this less centred 
art is Samuel Kalisch, twenty-six years old, who 
came to this country from Austria twelve years 
ago. Older than the two young enthusiasts, 
Kalisch has had more experience and has devel- 
oped a more efficient technique. He works in 
oils to a greater extent than the others and has 
a number of comparatively finished pictures; but 
his studio resembles that of any rather undis- 
tinguished uptown artist in point of diversity 

267 



of subject and artistic impulse. There is an 
Oriental scene of conventional character; a por- 
trait of himself taken from the mirror ; a num- 
ber of examples of still-life, apples, flowers, a 
"cute" scene of children playing on the beach; 
a landscape, etc. Of distinctive Ghetto things 
there are two old men, one just from the syna- 
gogue, with pensive eyes, a long beard and a 
Derby hat ; the other, ninety-four years old, who 
sits in the synagogue, with a long white beard, a 
black cap on his head, a cane in one hand and 
the Talmud in the other. These two portraits 
show considerable technical skill, but are faithful 
rather than interpretative, and indicate that the 
artist's sympathy is not absorbed in the life of 
the Ghetto. They are merely subjects, like any 
other, which might come to his hand. 

Now in full sympathy with what may be called 
the "movement" is Nathaniel Loewenberg, a 
little, black-haired, sad-eyed, sensitive and ap- 
pealing Russian Jew of twenty-one years of age. 
It is only recently, however, that he has turned 
from landscape to city types, of which he has a 
few sketches, very incomplete with one excep- 
tion, that also unfinished but unusually promis- 
ing ; it is in oil and represents a Jew fish pedler 
of attractive countenance and shabby clothes 
trying to sell a fine fish to three Ghetto women ; 

268 



these latter cleverly disting-uished, one who will 
probably buy, another who apparently would 
like to if she could reduce the price, and the 
third indifferent. 

Loewenberg was born in Moscow, of parents 
who were then and are now in business. He is 
enthusiastic at present over two things: Russian 
literature and the life of the Jews. On his table 
are two books — one a history of the Hebrews, 
the other Tolstoi's "Awakening," in Russian. 
His newest interest is the Ghetto; "for," he 
said, "the Ghetto is full of character. There 
the people's life is more exposed than anywhere 
else, and the artist can easily penetrate into it." 

The type Loewenberg hopes to delineate is of 
different character from that of Hester Street, 
where Gussow and Epstein work. His field is 
mainly at the corner of Rivington and Attorney 
streets, where the Jews are Hungarians and 
Poles and have a distinctive type. That is the 
location of another push-cart market, and altho 
the human types are different from those of 
Hester Street, the peddling occupations are 
identical. Loewenberg's fancy runs largely to 
the young Jewish girl of this quarter, and she is 
represented in several half done sketches. 

The New York Ghetto is constantly changing. 
It shifts from one part of town to another, and 

269 



the time is not so very far distant when it will 
cease to exist altogether. The sweat-shop will 
happily disappear with advancing civilization in 
New York. The tenement-houses will change 
in character, the children will learn English and 
partly forget their Yiddish language and peculiar 
customs. In spite of the fact that the Jews have 
been at all times and in all countries tenacious 
of their domestic peculiarities and their religion, 
the special character of the Ghetto will pass 
away in favorably conditioned America. The 
picturesqueness it now possesses will disappear. 
Perhaps, however, by that time an art will have 
been developed which will preserve for future 
generations the character of the present life ; 
which may thus have historical value, and ar- 
tistic beauty in addition. Epstein and Gussow, 
devoted to this result as they are, are yet quite 
eager to see present conditions pass away. To 
them the art they have selected seems of trifling 
importance in comparison with a general im- 
provement of the people they seem genuinely to 
love. They would be glad to have the present 
picturesqueness of the Ghetto give place to con- 
ditions more analogous to those of happier 
sections of New York. 

But in the meantime these few young artists, 
two or three particularly interested in Ghetto 

270 



types, five or six others, perhaps more, who 
occasionally contribute a sketch of the Ghetto, 
are in a fair way to get together a considerable 
body of pictures which shall have the distinction 
of portraying the Jewish community of the east 
side with fair adequacy. Certainly the interest 
of that Hester Street life, and of the tenement- 
houses that line it, is deep enough to inspire 
some serious man of plastic genius. And then 
it is not improbable that some great sombre 
pictures will be painted. The conditions for 
such a significant art are ripe, and it may find its 
master in one or another of the young men who 
are passionately "doing" Hester Street. 



271 



Chapter Terv 



No matter how "queer" are the numerous 
persons whom one can meet in the cafes of the 
quarter they are mainly redeemed by a genuinely 
intellectual vein. It is reserved for this final 
chapter to tell of some men who do not well fit 
into the preceding categories, but whose lives or 
works are, in one way or another, quite worthy 
of record. 

AN OUT-OF-DATE STORY-WRITER 

Shaikevitch is the author of interminable, un- 
signed novels, which are published in daily 
installments in the east side newspapers. He is 
so prolific that he makes a good living. There 
was a time, however, when he gladly signed his 
name to what he wrote. T hat time is over, and 
the reason for it is best brought out by a sketch 
of his history. 

He was born in Minsk, Russia, of orthodox 
Jewish parents. He began to write when he 
was twenty years old, at first in pure Hebrew, 
scientific and historical articles. He also wrote 

272 



a Hebrew novel, called the Victim of the Inquisition, 
to which the Russian censor objected on the 
ground that it dealt with religious subjects. 

Compelled to make his own living, young 
Shaikevitch, whose nom de plume has always 
been ** Schomer," began to write popular novels 
in the common jargon, in Yiddish. At that time 
the Jews in Russia were, even more than now, 
shut up in their own communities, knew nothing 
of European culture, had an education, if any, 
exclusively Hebraic and mediaeval and were 
outlandish to an extreme. The educated read 
only Hebrew, and the uneducated did not read 
at all. Up to that time, or until shortly before 
it, the Jew thought that nothing but holy teach- 
ing could be printed in Hebrew type. A man 
named Dick, however, a kind of forerunner of 
Shaikevitch, had begun to write secular stories 
in Yiddish. They were popular in form, intended 
for the ignorant populace who never read at all. 
Shaikevitch followed in Dick's lines, and made a 
great success. 

He has written over i6o stories, and for many 
years he was the great popular Yiddish writer 
in Russia. The people would read nothing but 
"Schomer's" works. The ignorant masses 
eagerly devoured the latest novel of Schomer's. 
It goes without saying that, under the circum- 

273 



stances, these books could be of very slight 
literary value. They were long, sentimental 
effusions, tales of bad Christians and good Jews, 
with a monotonous repetition of stock characters 
and situations ; and with a melodramatic and 
sensational element. They probably corre- 
sponded pretty closely to our "nickel" novels, 
published in some of our cheapest periodicals, 
and intended for the most ignorant element of 
our population. Some of their titles are A 
Shameful Error, An Unexpected Happiness, The Prin- 
cess in the Wood, Conlyided, Rebecca, 

" Schomer " was so successful that he had 
many imitators, who never, however, succeeded 
so well. The publishers sometimes tried to 
deceive the ignorant people into thinking that a 
new novel of Schomer's had appeared. On the 
cover of the book they put thetitle and the new 
author's name in very small letters, and then in 
very large letters : " In the style of Schomer." 
But it did not work. The people remained 
faithful to the books of the man whom they had 
first read. 

When Shaikevitch, or "Schomer" himself, 
describes the purpose and characters of his 
work he talks as follows : 

"My works are partly pictures of the life of 
the Jews in the Russian villages of fifty years 

274 



ago, and partly novels about the old history of 
the Jews. Fifty years ago the Jews were more 
fanatical than they are now. They did nothing 
but study the Talmud, pray and fast, wear long 
beards and wigs and look like monkeys. I 
satirized all this in my novels. I tried to teach 
the ignorant Jews that they were ridiculous, that 
they ought to take hold of modern, practical life 
and give up all that was merely formal and 
absurd in the old customs. I taught them that 
a pious man might be a hypocrite, and that it is 
better to do good than to pray. My works had 
a great effect in modernizing and educating the 
ignorant Jews. In my stories I pictured how 
the Jewish boy might go out from his little 
village into the wide, Gentile world, and make 
something of himself. In the last twenty-five 
years, the Jews, owing to my books, have lost a 
great deal of their fanaticism. At that time 
they had nothing but my books to read, and so 
my satire had a great effect." 

Shaikevitch is not entirely alone in this good 
opinion of his work. Dr. Blaustein, superin- 
tendent of the Educational Alliance, said that 
he owed his position as an educated and modern 
man to reading novels when he was a boy. Dr. 
Blaustein lived in a small Russian village, and 
one day he read a story of "Schomer's" which 

275 



represented a Jewish boy going out into the 
world and criticizing his Hebraic surroundings. 
That was the beginning of Dr. Blaustein's 
"awakening." Other intelligent Russian Jews 
probably had this same experience, altho now 
as mature men they would all, no doubt, grant 
only a very small, if any, artistic quality to the 
famous Yiddish writer. 

A few years after Shaikevitch's great popular- 
ity two men began to write in Yiddish stories 
which really had value for the intelligent and 
educated — Abramovitch and, particularly, his 
pupil Rabinovitch. It was this work which, in 
some sort of form, did intelligently for the more 
educated Jews what Shaikevitch had done for 
the lowest stratum. Rabinovitch published a 
book in which he brought Shaikevitch to trial. 
He literally "tore him up the back" as far as 
literature is concerned — pointed out the taste- 
less, cheap, sensational character of his work, 
and held him up generally to ridicule. 

As the Jews became better educated this 
critical feeling about Shaikevitch's work grew 
more general. It is significant of the progress 
towards modern things made by the Jews that 
even the very ignorant no longer admire Shai- 
kevitch's work as much as formerly. He is "out 
of date," so much so that he now does not sign 

376 




N. M. SHAIKEVITCH 



the stories he publishes in the Yiddish news- 
papers, which, nevertheless, are still popular 
among the most ignorant. 

The intellectual Socialists of the Jewish quar- 
ter in New York also had their fling at the pop- 
ular writer, and helped to put him into obscur- 
ity. Now it is a common thing in the Ghetto to 
hear a Socialist say that Shaikevitch wielded a 
more disintegrating and unfavorable influence 
on the Jews than any other writer. But, never- 
theless, the calm old man, who has a wife and 
several grown children, who are making their 
way in the new world, still sits quietly at his 
desk, drinking Russian tea and doing his daily 
"stunt " of several thousand words for the Yid- 
dish newspapers. 

The reason given by Mr. Shaikevitch for com- 
ing to America is that he began to be interested 
in play writing, when the Yiddish stage was 
prohibited in Russia. The actors left Russia 
then and came to America, and some of them 
later wrote Shaikevitch, who was one of the 
earliest Yiddish playwrights, to join them in 
New York. He did so, and has written twelve 
plays, which have been produced in this city. 
Some of the better known of them are : The 
JeTvish Count, Hamann the Second, Rebecca and Drey- 
fas, Shaikevitch is interesting mainly as rep- 

278 



resenting in his work an early stage of the 
popular Yiddish consciousness. 

A CYNICAL INVENTOR 
The "intellectuals" who gather in the Russian 
cafes delight in expressing the ideas for which 
they were persecuted abroad. Enthusiasm for 
progress and love of ideas is the characteristic 
tone of these gatherings and an entire lack of 
practical sense. 

Very striking, therefore, was the attitude of a 
Russian-Jewish inventor, who took his lunch 
the other day at one of the most literary of these 
cafes. Near him were a trio of enthusiasts, ges- 
ticulating over their tea, but he sat aloof, alone. 
He listened with a cold, superior smile. He 
neither smoked nor drank, but sat, with his thin, 
shrewd face, chillily thinking. 

It is common report in the community of the 
intellectual Ghetto that Mr. Okun made a great 
invention connected with the electric arc lamp. 
It resulted in lengthening the time before the 
carbon is burnt out from four or five hours to 
150 hours or thereabouts. He might have been 
a millionaire to-day, both he and his acquaint- 
ances maintain, but, with the usual unpractical 
nature of the Russian Jew, he was cheated by 
unscrupulous lawyers. He was a shirt maker, 

279 



and for six years saved from his $io a week to 
buy the apparatus necessary for the task. At 
last it was completed, but he was robbed of the 
fortune, of the fame, of the prestige to which his 
great idea entitled him. As it is, he gets only 
$1,250 a year for the great deed, spends much of 
his time silently in the cafes, and dreams of 
other inventions when not engaged with criticiz- 
ing his kind. 

An American, who sometimes visited the place 
for "color" and for the unpractical enthusiasm 
which he missed among his own people, sat 
down by the inventor, whose face interested 
him, and entered into conversation. He spoke 
of a Yiddish playwright whom he admired. 

"I do not know much about him," said the 
inventor. "I am not a genius, like the others." 

He sneered, but it was so nearly imperceptible 
that it did not seem ill-natured. 

"But I am told," said the American, "that 
you are a great inventor. And that is a kind of 
genius." 

"Yes, perhaps," he replied, carelessly. "It 
takes talent, too, to do what I have done. But 
I am not a genius, like these people." 

Again he smiled, sarcastically. 

" I find," said the American, " a great many 
interesting people in these cafes." 



"Yes, they are what you call characters, I 
suppose," he said, dispassionately; "but I find 
them interesting only for one reason — no, no, I 
won't tell you what that reason is." 

"You don't seem to be as enthusiastic about 
the people as I am," said the American, "but 
whenever I come into a cafe down here I find 
serious men who will talk seriously. They are 
different from the Americans who amuse them- 
selves in bars, at horse races and farces." 

The inventor smiled coldly. 

" I do not call serious what you call serious," 
he said. " It is not necessary to talk seriously 
to be serious. Serious men do things. The Rus- 
sians don't do things. If they were gay and did 
things, they would be more serious than they are. 
But they are solemn and don't do anything." 

"I don't agree with you," said the American, 
warmly, "Doesn't Blank, who writes so many 
excellent novels, do anything? Don't the actors, 
who act so truthfully, without self-consciousness, 
do anything ? Don't the journalists, who spread 
excellent ideas, do anything ? " 

The inventor nodded judicially and remarked 
that there were some exceptions. 

"But," he added, "you are deceived by the 
surface. There are many men in our colony 
who seem to be stronger intellectually than they 

281 



really are. In Russia a few men, really culti- 
vated and intellectual, give the tone, and every- 
body follows them. In America, however, the 
public gives the tone, and the playwright, the 
literary man, simply expresses the public. So 
that really intellectual Americans do not express 
as good ideas as less intellectual Russians. The 
Russians all imitate the best. The Americans 
imitate what the mass of the people want. But 
an intellectual American is more intellectual 
than these geniuses around here whom you like. 
Of course, they have some good things in them, 
as everybody has." 

"What is it that you find to like in this Rus- 
sian colony?" asked the American. 

"I find," replied the inventor, "that when they 
come over here they lose what is best in the 
Russian character and acquire what is worst in 
the American character." 

"And what do you deem best in the Russian 
character ?" 

"Well, in Russia they are warm hearted and 
friendly. They are envious even there, but not 
nearly so envious as they are here." 

"And what do you find that is worst in the 
American character ? " 

" Oh, you know ; they do everything for money. 
But yet there is more greatness in the American 

282 



character. They are mechanical. They are 
practical. They don't get cheated by unscrupu- 
lous lawyers. 

"Are you married?" asked the American, 
sympathetically. 

"No, thank God!" he replied, with more 
energy than he had yet shown. 

" But you have no friends ? " 

"No." 

"Some men," commented the American, "find 
a friend in a wife." 

"That depends on a man's character. It in- 
creases the loneliness of some men," replied the 
inventor, smiling in spite of what he was saying. 

"You seem to me to be rather pessimistic," 
remarked the American. 

" No, I am not pessimistic. I understand that 
a pessimist thinks life is worse than it is, but I 
see things just as they are ; that is all. When I 
came to New York I was enthusiastic, too ; I 
was an optimist. I saw life as it is not. But 
the mists have passed from before my eyes, and 
I see things just as they are." 

AN IMPASSIONED CRITIC 

He loves literature with an absorbing love, 
and is pained constantly by what he deems the 
chaos of art in the United States. The Ameri- 

283 



cans seem to him to be trivial and immature in 
their art, lacking in serious purpose. 

" It is a vast and fruitful land," he will say, 
"but there is no order and little sincerity as far 
as art is concerned. Your writers try to amuse 
the readers, to entertain them merely, rather 
than to give them serious and vital truth. Why 
is it that a race which is clever and progressive 
in all mechanical and industrial matters, which 
in such things has no overpowering respect for 
the past, is weighed down in art by a regard 
for all the literary ghosts of bygone times ? 
Look at the books put forth in any one year in 
the United States ! What a senseless hodge- 
podge it is ! Variety of all kinds, historical 
novels, short stories, social plays, costume 
plays, bindings, illustrations, editions de luxe, new 
editions of books written in all ages alongside of 
the latest productions of the day. The Ameri- 
cans have great tact in most things. They are 
the cleverest people in the world, and yet they 
are very backward in literature. 

" Indeed the whole Anglo-Saxon race, great 
economically and practically as it is, is curiously 
at sea and chaotic in all that pertains to literary 
art. There are men of genius, great artists 
among them, but they are artists only in part, 
fragmentarily, artists without being aware of 

284 



it, with no consistent and clear understanding of 
what art is. Your great men are hindered by 
their environment. America and England are 
the most difficult countries in the world for real 
art to get a hearing, for all the people insist on 
being amused by their authors. They treat 
them as they do their actors, merely as public 
servants whose duty it is to amuse the public 
when it is tired. But art is a serious thing, 
instinct with sincerity, and should never be 
lightly approached either by the artist or the 
reader. 

"Another indication of what I mean is the 
way you all talk about style over here, as if the 
style had anything to do with art. Some of the 
great Russian realists have no style, but they 
are great artists. There was a time when to 
write well was an exception, and people who did 
it were supposed to be great. Now so many 
write well that it constitutes no longer any par- 
ticular distinction. Real art consists in the pres- 
entation of ideas in images, and in the power of 
seeing in images, and of reproducing imagina- 
tively ; what is thus seen is wholly independent 
of style. And, more, words often stand in the 
way of art. A man writes a pretty style. There 
may be no idea or image beneath it, but you 
Anglo-Saxons say : * Ha ! Here is a man with a 

28s 



style, a great artist ! ' But he is no artist. He 
is a mere decorator, trivial and empty. He 
doesn't seize earnestly upon life and tell the 
truth about it. Now and then, indeed, I see 
indications of real art in your writers — great 
images, great characters, great truth, but all 
merely in suggestion. You don't know when 
you do anything good, and most of you don't 
like it when you see it. You prefer an exciting 
plot to a great delineation of character. Some- 
times you throw off, often in newspapers, some- 
thing that indicates great talent, real art, but 
you cover it up with an indistinguishable mass 
of rubbish. You don't know what you are after. 
You have no method. Every writer goes his 
single way, confused, at cross purposes. There 
is no school of literature. Consequently, there 
is great loss of energy, great waste of material; 
great richness, but what carelessness, what 
deplorable carelessness, about the deepest and 
noblest and most serious things in life ! I love 
you ; I love you all ; you are clever, good fellows, 
but you are children, talented, to be sure, but 
wayward and vagrant children, in the fields of 
art. Sincerity, realism, purpose and unity are 
what as a race you need, if you wish ever to 
have a consistent and genuine art. 

"The Russian, the Frenchman, the German, 
286 



knows what he wants. He is after the truth. 
He is serious about life. He doesn't try to 
dodge the facts for the sake of a little false 
cheerfulness and optimistic inanity." 

Thus talks the Russian prophet. He is a 
robust, earnest man, who is trying to make head 
and tail out of contemporary English literature. 
He finds no great mainspring of impulse or prin- 
ciple behind it, but an infinite pandering to an 
infinitely diversified public taste. He thinks it is 
a kind of vaudeville of art, full of compromises, 
vulgar in its lack of principle. It makes him sad 
in much the same way that skepticism and pro- 
fanity sadden a deeply religious person. Wis- 
dom and truth he wants, and doesn't find them. 
What he finds is haste, greed, incompleteness 
and waste, and his soul abhors anything which 
takes away from the deepest nature of the soul. 
He is really a religious man, profound and sin- 
cere, sad at the wasteful, foolish lightness in art 
of the Anglo-Saxon world. Like his great 
countryman, Tolstoy, he writes stories, and, 
again like Tolstoy, as he grows older the more 
he sees in art and life which he would like to 
reform and deepen. Economy of the heart, soul 
and brain, the direction of them to a constant 
end — the feeling of the necessity of this is now 
an altruistic passion with this man. Like all 

287 



reformers, he is sad, but, again like all reform- 
ers, he is robust and calm, self-sufficient. 

THE POET OF ZIONISM 

Naptali Herz Imber is known to all Jews of 
any education as the man who has written in 
the old Hebrew language the poems that best 
express the hope of Zion and that best serve as 
an inspiring battle cry in the struggle for a new 
Jerusalem. Zangwill has translated into Eng- 
lish the Hebrew "Wacht Am Rhein," the most 
popular of Imber's poems, which is called The 
Wakh on the Jordan, It is in four stanzas, the 
first of which is : 

Like the crash of the thunder 

Which splitteth asunder 

The flame of the cloud, 

On our ears ever falling, 

A voice is heard calling 

From Zion aloud; 

"Let your spirits' desires 

For the land of your sires 

Eternally burn 

From the foe to deliver 

Our own holy river, 

To Jordan return." 

Where the soft flowing stream 

Murmurs low as in dream, 

There set we our watch. 

Our watchword, "The sword. 

Of our land and our Lord," 

By the Jordan then set we our watch. 

288 



Mr. Imber is a peculiar character and is said 
to be the original of the poet Pinchas in Zang- 
will's Children of the Ghetto. 

At a Russian-Jewish cafe on Canal Street he 
may often be found. Not long ago I met him 
there and discovered that the dignified Hebrew 
poet had as a man many of the more humorous 
and less impressive peculiarities of the character 
in Mr. Zangwill's book. It is difficult to take 
him seriously. He was sitting opposite an old 
"magid," or wandering preacher, whose spec- 
ialty is to attack America, and he consented to 
tell about his work and to confide some of his 
ideas. 

"I am the origin of the Zionistic movement," 
he said. " It is not generally known, but I am. 
Many years ago I went to Jerusalem, saw the 
misery of the people, felt the spirit of the place 
and determined to bring my scattered people 
again together. For twelve years I struggled 
to put the Zionistic movement on foot, and now 
that I have started it I will let others carry it on 
and get the glory. For long I was not recog- 
nized, but when my Hebrew poems were pub- 
lished our whole race were made enthusiastic 
for Zion. 

*'If you wish to know what the spirit and 
purpose of my Hebrew poems is I will tell you. 

2S9 



For two thousand years Hebrew poetry has 
been nothing but lamentations — nothing but 
Hterature expressing the spirit of Jeremiah. 
There have been no love songs, no wine songs, 
no songs of joy, nothing pagan. There have 
been no poets, only critics in rhyme. Now what 
I did in my Hebrew verses was to do away with 
lamentations. We have had enough of lamen- 
tations. I introduced the spirit of love and 
wine, the pagan spirit. My theme, indeed, is 
Zion. I am an individualist. It is the only 'ist' 
I believe in, and I want my nation to be individ- 
ual, too. I want them to be joyously them- 
selves, and so I am a Zionist. Therefore I did 
away with critical poetry and with lamentations 
and led my people on to an individual and a 
joyous life." 

Altho Mr. Imber's best work is in Hebrew 
poetry, he is yet a very voluminous writer on 
science, economics, medicine, mysticism, history 
and many other subjects. 

" I have written on everything," said the poet, 
" everything. I know almost nothing about the 
subjects on which I write. I don't believe in 
reading. I believe in knowing myself. In that 
way we learn to know others. Psychology is 
the only science. All others are fakes, and I 
can fake as well as anybody. Why read, or why 

290 



seek amusement in the theatres or elsewhere, 
when one can sit in a cafe and talk to a man like 
that?" 

He pointed in the old "magid" opposite him. 

"Whenever I want to amuse myself," he said, 
" I talk to a man like that, and I cannot amuse 
myself without learning more about psychology." 

With the exception of his poems most of the 
poet's work was written in the English language. 

"I began to write English late in life," he 
said. " Israel Zangwill helped me to begin. He 
said he would correct what I wrote, but I wrote 
so much that Mr. Zangwill stopped reading it 
and told me to go ahead on my own hook. So I 
did. I have written infinitely in English, some 
of which has been published — Music of the Psalms; 
Education and the Talmud, which was issued by 
the United States government in the report of 
the commissioner of education; many articles on 
mysticism and other subjects in the magazine 
Ariel ; The Mystery of the Golden Calf, the Music of the 
GhettOf and many other works on the cabalistic 
mysticism. I have also written. Who Was Cruci- 
fied? wherein I prove that it was not Jesus. If 
I kept on all day I could not tell you the names 
of all I have written. I have published many 
articles in the Jewish-American papers satirizing 
the rabbis, who consequently hate me. Much of 

291 



my work, indeed, is satirical. The world needs 
cleaning up a little, particularly the rabbis. Put 
the reformed and orthodox rabbis together and 
some good might come of them. I am not 
afraid of these people, whom I call silk-chimney 
rabbis, because they wear tall hats instead of 
knowing the Talmud. It was my own invention 
— 'silk-chimney rabbis.' " 

Mr. Imber is evidently very fond of this 
phrase, for he repeated it many times. Indeed, 
he does not seem to be a very pious Jew. He 
himself admits it, for he said : 

" I do not think they will say * Kaddish ' for 
my soul when I am dead. And yet I am not a 
skeptic, exactly. I have a principle, Zionism. 
And beyond Zionism I have another great in- 
terest. I have now perfected Zionism, so I am 
free to pass on to Mysticism, in which I am 
deeply at work. The mystics are all bluffers. I 
am a mystic, but my mysticism is simple and 
plain. My aim is to present a perfectly simple 
view of occultism. It is difficult to persuade 
Americans to become mystics. They care noth- 
ing for Hegel and Kant. Their philosophy I 
call Barnumism." 

Mr. Imber has largely given up writing 
Hebrew now, but lately he wrote a Hebrew 
poem comprising 200 closely printed pages. He 

292 




NAPTALI HERZ IMBER 



did it, he said, to spite a man who said the poet 
had forg-otten Hebrew because of his penchant for 
English. 

Not long ago Mr. Imber wrote a Last Confes- 
sion in Hebrew. He was very sick in a St. Louis 
hospital with blood poisoning, and thought he 
was going to die. They wanted him to confess 
his sins. So he did it, in Hebrew verse, which 
he translated to me, evidently on the spur of the 
moment, thus : 

When my day will come 

To wander in distress. 
Call the priest to my room. 

My sins to confess. 

The sins which I have committed 

With deliberation. 
They will by the Lord be omitted, 

Who promised us salvation. 

The evils I have done. 

Not conscious of the action. 

Have passed away and gone 
Without satisfaction. 

I see near me the green table : 

The gamblers play aloud. 
And I am sick and unable 

To mix up with the crowd. 

There are still beautiful roses. 

With aroma blessed ; 
There are still handsome maidens, 

Whose lips I have not pressed. 

294 



This has me affected, 

I am full of remorse, 
That of late I have neglected 

The girl and the roses. 

Written on what the poet thought was his 
deathbed, this satirical poem is almost as heroic 
as The Watch on the Jordan, 

Mr. Imber has also written many original 
poems in English, which, however, he fears will 
not live. Many of them are satirical poems 
about American life and politics. When in Den- 
ver before the Spanish war he wrote some verses 
beginning : 

Our flag will soon be planted 

In a land where we do not want it. 

It was, the poet said, through the simple, clear 
character of his mystical attainments that he was 
able to predict the results of the war with Spain. 

Mr. Imber looks upon America as the "land of 
the bluff" and as such admires it. But he dis- 
approves of our reform movements. He thinks 
the recent attempt to reform the east side was 
due to the desire of the rich to divert attention 
from their own vices. He doesn't approve of 
reform any way. 

" We have been trying to reform human na- 
ture," he said, "for 2,000 years, and have not 
done it yet. The only way to make a man good 

295 



is to remove his stomach, for so long as he is 
hungry he will steal, and so long as he has 
other desires he will commit other wicked ac- 
tions. Moses and Jesus were smart men and 
knew that evil could not be rooted out, and so 
they tolerated it." 

Mr. Imber has recently made his last will and 
testament. It is in Hebrew prose and runs thus 
in English : 

"To the rabbis I leave what I don't know; it 
will help them to a longer life. To my enemies 
I leave my rheumatism. Between the Repub- 
lican and Democratic parties I divide the boodle 
which they have not yet touched. To the Jew- 
ish editors I leave my broken pen, so that they 
can write slowly and avoid mistakes. My books 
—those intended for beginners — I leave to the 
eight professors, so that they can learn to read. 
As an executor there shall be appointed a man 
who knows Barnum's philosophy through and 
through. Written on my deathbed. Witness, 
Mr. Pluto of the Underground and his Famulus, 
the doctor. As an afterthought I leave to my 
publishers the last bill unpaid by me. They can 
frame it and keep it as an amulet to ward away 
that class of authors. " 

" Is it sarcastic ? " asked Mr. Imber, chuckling 
delightedly. 

296 



Some time ago Mr. Imber sent the news of 
his own death to the various Hebrew and Yid- 
dish publications. Many long obituaries — "very 
fine ones," said the poet — appeared. 

"In that way," said Mr. Imber, "I learned 
who were my enemies. It had one evil conse- 
quence, however. When I afterward asked the 
editor to publish one of my articles he said : 

"'You are officially dead, and as such cannot 
rush into print. 

"That reply really gave me a grievous mo- 
ment," said the poet, with a shrewd, Voltairian 
smile. 

AN INTELLECTUAL DEBAUCHEE 

Four men sat excitedly talking in the little 
cafe on Grand Street where the Socialists and 
Anarchists of the Russian quarter were wont 
to meet late at night and stay until the small 
hours. An American, who might by chance 
have happened there, would have wondered 
what important event had occurred to rasp these 
men's voices, to cause them to gesticulate so 
wildly, to give their dark, intelligent faces so 
fateful, so ominous an expression. In reality, 
however, nothing out of the ordinary had hap- 
pened. It was the usual course of human affairs 
which kept these men in a constant glow of 

297 



unhappy emotion ; an emotion which they deeply 
preferred to trivial optimism and the content 
founded on Philistine well-being. They were 
always excited about life, for life as it is consti- 
tuted seemed to them very unjust. 

It was nearly midnight, and the men in the 
cafe, altho they had drunk nothing stronger than 
Russian tea, talked on, seemingly intoxicated 
with ideas. One was the editor of a Yiddish 
newspaper in the quarter and a contributor to 
the Anarchistic monthly. He was a man of 
about forty years of age, lighter in complexion 
than his companions, but yet dark. Like them 
he was dressed carelessly and poorly. In his 
melancholy eyes shone a gentle idealism. He 
spoke in a voice lower and softer than those of 
his fellows. He was deeply liked by them, for 
he was capable of sweet and beautiful ideas 
about the perfect humanity, some of which he 
had put into a play which had a short life on the 
Bowery, but lived in the hearts of these warm 
intellectuals. Non-resistance to evil was the 
favorite principle of this gentle Anarchist, 
whose name was Blanofsky. 

His companions were younger and more 
heated and violent in speech, tho their atten- 
uated bodies and thoughtful and sensitive faces 
did not suggest reliance on physical force. On 

298 



the Bowery the Irish tough fights after a word, 
but an all day dispute between two Jews on 
Canal or Hester Street is unaccompanied by the 
clenching of a fist. A dark, thin young man, 
whose closely shaven face seemed somehow to 
fit his spirit, given over entirely to the "move- 
ment," sat at Blanofsky's right hand. At almost 
any hour of the day or night Hermann Samaro- 
vitch could be found at the Anarchist headquart- 
ers on Essex Street, poring over the books of 
the propaganda and engaging in talk with other 
bright spirits of the "movement." Now, as he 
talked or listened in the cafe on Grand Street, 
his pale, smooth face seemed dead to all the 
ordinary interests of youth. The spirit of life 
was represented in him only by the passion for 
the cause, which burned in his black eyes. He 
had no other function than to worship at the 
shrine. How he lived, therefore, was a mystery. 
Of the other two men, one, Jacob Hessler, a 
labor leader in the Ghetto, an eloquent speaker ; 
of more commanding presence, but less sensitive 
and impressive at short range than either Bla- 
nofsky or Samarovitch, was silent, for the most 
part. He talked only to crowds, partly because 
it was exciting, but mainly because his limited 
intelligence put him at a disadvantage in inti- 
mate talk with men of concentrated intellectual 

299 



character. The fourth man in the cafe, Abraham 
Gudinsky, was a simple admirer of Blanofsky. 
He was born in Jerusalem, had studied law in 
Constantinople, had lived in Paris as a bohemian, 
and, after a few years passed in the common- 
place, dissipated gayety of youth, had come to 
New York, where his sympathetic and idealistic 
character had come under the influence of the 
quiet charm of Blanofsky. He had small, live, 
eyes and a high forehead, and his body perpetu- 
ally moved nervously. 

"I do not believe," said Blanofsky, in Rus- 
sian, "that anything can be accomplished by 
force. Our cause is too sacred to tarnish it with 
blood, and it is too strong in logic and justice 
not to conquer peaceably in the end ; and that, 
too, without leaving behind it the ill-breeding 
weeds of a violent course. I have nothing but 
pity for the misguided wretch who took the life 
of King Humbert, thinking he was acting for the 
cause. It is the acts of such madmen as he that 
make us appear to the public as merely irrational 
monsters." 

" Nevertheless," said Samarovitch, his dark 
eyes glowing, "It is natural that the crimes of 
society against the individual should irritate us 
sometimes into violent acts. I am not sure but 
that it is good that it should be so. Those 

300 



devoted men, in the great movement in Russia, 
at the time the Czar was killed, were as clear- 
headed as they were devoted ; and they felt that 
the governmental evil pressing in Russia could 
be relieved only by a kind of terrorism. And 
they were right," he concluded, with gloomy 
emphasis. 

Blanofsky shook his head, and was about to 
speak of Tolstoy, whom he regarded as the great 
interpreter of genuine anarchy, when he was 
interrupted by the approach of a young man and 
a young woman who had just entered the cafe. 
Sabina, as she was familiarly known to the faith- 
ful, dark and slender, with very large, emotional 
eyes and a mobile mouth, had just come from 
her lecture to a crowd of workingmen, to whom 
she had spoken eloquently of their right to lead a 
life with greater light and beauty in it. The 
emotions expressed by her eloquence, and stirred 
by it, still lay in her deep eyes as she entered 
the cafe. Her companion, who had walked with 
her from the lecture, was a young poet, whose 
words followed one another with turbulent en- 
ergy. His head was set uncommonly close to 
his compact, stout shoulders, seeming to have a 
firmer rest than usual on the trunk, and thus 
better to support the strain of his thick-coming 
fancies. His habitual attitude was to hold his 

301 



closed fist even with his shoulder, and punctuate 
with it the transitions of his thought. Even in 
winter the perspiration rolled down his face as 
he spoke, for thought with him was intense to 
the point of pain. He was the perfect type of 
the intellectual debauchee of the Russian-Jewish 
colony. He drank nothing but tea and coffee, 
but within him burned his ideas. He made his 
living by writing an occasional poem or article 
for a Yiddish paper, and when he had gathered 
together a few dollars he repaired again to the 
cafes, seeking companions to whom he could 
confide his exuberant thoughts, which were 
always expressed in poetic images. He slept 
whenever and wherever he was tired, but he slept 
seldom, and unwillingly. Unrest was his quest 
and unhappiness his dearest consolation. The 
type of his mind was as Russian as his name, 
which was Levitzky. The girl looked and lis- 
tened to him, fascinated. They sat down at the 
table with the others, and while the waiter was 
bringing their tea and lemon, Levitzky continued 
his discourse : 

"No, I do not like America. The people here 
are satisfied. Things seem frozen here— finished. 
Great deeds have been done, great things have 
been created. Wall Street and Broadway fill 
me with wonder. The outside is great, showing 

302 



energy that has been. But at the core, all is 
dead. The imagination and the heart are ex- 
tinguished. Content and comfort eat up the 
nation. New York seems to me an active city of 
the dead, where there is much movement, but no 
soul. Russia, which I love, is just the opposite. 
There nothing is done, nothing finished. One 
sees nothing, but feels warmth and vitality at 
the heart. In love it is the same way. The 
American wants a legal wife and a comfortable 
home, but the Russian wants a mistress behind 
a mountain to whom he can not penetrate but 
towards whom he can strive, for whom he can 
long and dream. It is better to hope than to 
attain." 

Sabina looked at him, her bosom heaving. 
His last words seemed to trouble her, but she 
sat in silence and appeared to listen to the con- 
versation, which turned on a recent strike in the 
Ghetto. Finally she got up to go home, refusing 
Levitzky's offer to accompany her. Leaving the 
Anarchists still engaged in talk, she went into 
the street, which, altho it was after one o'clock, 
was still far from deserted. 

Instead of going to her poor room in the 
tenement-house on Hester Street she walked 
slowly along Grand Street, towards the Bowery, 
deep in reflection. She was thinking of Levitzky 

304 



and of her life. Ten years before, as a child of 
twelve, she had come to New York from Rus- 
sia, with her father, a tailor, who had worked 
for several years in the sweat-shops. He had 
died two years before, and since then Sabina 
had worked in the sweat-shops in the day time 
and in the evening had devoted herself to 
the cause. At first she had gone to the Social- 
istic and Anarchistic meetings merely because 
they were attended by the only society in the 
east side which at all satisfied her growing 
intellectual activity. These rough workingmen 
sometimes seemed to her inspired, and her ardor 
and youth were soon deeply interested in the 
cause of Socialism, partly because of the pity 
inspired by the sordid poverty about her, but 
mainly because of the strong attraction any 
earnest movement has for a young and emotion- 
ally intellectual person. As was quite inevitable, 
she went from an unreserved love for the group 
of ideas called Socialistic to the quite contrary 
ones of Anarchy. And this change was not 
founded on intellectual conviction, but was due 
to the simple fact that the Anarchistic cause was 
more extreme and gave greater apparent oppor- 
tunity for self-sacrifice ; and for the reason, too, 
that the most interesting man she had met, 
Levitzky, was at that time an Anarchist. These 

305 



I 



two made, very often, passionate speeches on 
the same evening to a crowd of attentive 
laborers, and after the meeting walked the street 
together or sat over their tea in the cafe discus- 
sing high ideals, not only Anarchy, but all noble 
subjects that detach the soul from the sordid 
business of life. 

Of course, Sabina loved Levitzky. His robust 
intellect and exuberant, poetical nature, a nature 
constant to passion, but inconstant to persons, 
made her beloved ideas seem real, gave a con- 
crete seal to the creations of her imagination. 

Neither Levitzky nor Sabina were conscious 
of the strong feeling that he was arousing in the 
girl's soul. He poured his mind out to her. 
His rich nature unfolded in her sympathetic 
presence. She loved him for the mental crises 
he had passed ; and he loved merely the mental 
images his words aroused in him when she was 
present. 

It was not until the evening of the scene in the 
cafe that she had fully understood that she was 
eternally in love with Levitzky. On the walk 
from the lecture to the Grand Street cafe they 
had for the first time spoken of love between 
man and woman, and Levitzky had launched 
forth into an eloquent tirade against satisfied 
desire, a speech which was concluded in the 

306 



cafe, with the remark about how a Russian loves 
an inaccessible mistress, a beautiful creature 
separated from her lover by a mountain, while 
the despised American wants a legal wife whom 
he can enjoy and be sure of. 

The sentiment fitted in beautifully with 
Sabina's habitually enthusiastic habit of mind. 
But to-night she was ashamed of herself because 
his words filled her with fear and pain. Irrational 
emotion drove her theories from her head, and 
struck her dumb with grief for what she looked 
upon as a betrayed ideal. She, who had devoted 
herself to the " movement " ; she, who had chosen 
an intellectual career, a life devoted to the cause 
of humanity ; she, who had been proud of her 
independence and had confidently looked forward 
to a life of celibacy ; this superior person was in 
love, and loved as passionately and as personally 
as any commonplace woman. She devoutly be- 
lieved in the worth of Levitzky's ideas against 
human love between the sexes, and the fact that 
her nerves and imagination went against her 
head overwhelmed her with remorse. She was 
unfaithful not only to her own ideals, but to the 
ideals of the man she loved. She knew that 
Levitzky felt no love for her. If he had, she 
would not have loved him. She longed to tear 
this feeling, which she felt to be unworthy of her 

307 



and in the nature of an insult to him, from her 
heart ; but she knew she could not. 

After leaving Levitzky and the Anarchists in 
the cafe, Sabina walked slowly towards the 
Bowery, suffering with love and humiliation, 
thinking of Levitzky and of the past, the devoted 
past which now seemed deeply wronged. Her 
despair can perhaps be understood by the fanati- 
cal nun whose years of devotion to her vows are 
rendered vain by a sudden impulse of the heart 
which is yielded to ; or by the ambitious man of 
affairs who betrays a governmental trust because 
of the repeated frenzy of an emotion which wears 
out his resistance and leads him to the woman 
who has charmed and deceived him. 

As Sabina passed through the street her at- 
tention was mechanically caught by the notice 
in a shop window, which was still dimly lighted, 
of an important labor meeting, to take place in a 
couple of days, at which a famous German Anar- 
chist was to speak — a man who was coming from 
Europe to join the "Movement" in New York, 
whose books she had read and loved. Such 
notices always arrested her eager attention, and 
even now habit led her to stop by the window and 
dully read the entire poster. The thought of 
the coming event, which would once have been 
of palpitating interest to her, increased her re- 

308 



morse and despair. Of such great activity as 
this she had rendered herself incapable. Togo 
to any such meeting now would be hypocrisy, 
she felt. The cause she wanted to love and 
serve and still did love she could yet never again 
be wholehearted about. She bore with her a 
burden. She seemed to herself to be a sinful 
creature, and the devoted life she had led seemed 
poisoned by this terrible passion which controlled 
her. She felt she never again could look Le- 
vitzky in the face ; for a terrible impulse in her 
was about to drag her from the pedestal where 
he had helped to place her ; and to drag with her 
the man she loved from the impersonal height at 
which he stood. 

Her passionate nature rebelled at the thought 
of any compromise with the ideal. She could 
not endure life otherwise than as her imagination 
dictated — ^and here was a passion which threat- 
ened the existence of all she approved. What in 
a colder nature would have been a mere intel- 
lectual phase was with her an unbearably emo- 
tional upheaval ; and on the spot she made a 
resolution conceived in despair but carried out 
with logical coolness. As the rebellious thought 
surged over her and filled her being with hot 
emotion she became aware that the shop was 
that of an apothecary on East Broadway, 

309 



whither she had unconsciously wandered. With 
set lips she entered, aroused the sleeping clerk, a 
Socialist whom she knew, and bought that which 
soon allayed her problem without solving it. 
Early the next morning the clerk found her lying 
near the doorway, with an expression of impul- 
sive energy on her dark face. 

About three days later Blanofsky and his three 
friends were sitting in the cafe on Grand Street, 
drinking their eternal Russian tea and talking 
about Levitzky. 

" I never saw a man so broken," said Blanofsky 
in his soft voice, **as Levitzky was by the death 
of that girl. For a week I feared for his life, he 
was so desperate. It seems he met Lefeitkin's 
clerk, who told him. He disappeared from the 
quarter for several days, and no one knew where 
he went. Four days ago he came to my room 
looking like a madman. His hair was full of 
mud and his clothes torn and filthy. His eyes 
burned in his pale face, and his speech, more 
voluminous than ever, was broken and inco- 
herent. He stayed all day, refused to eat, but 
talked all the time of Sabina, of her mind, of her 
rare personality, of her devotion to the cause. 
He was interrupted by fits of sobbing. I did not 
know that this man of intellect was capable of 
so great personal feeling." 

310 



"Levitzky is weak," said Herman Samaro- 
vitch, "and inconstant. He has vivid ideas, and 
imagination, but he never really cared for the 
cause. He was a Socialist before he was an 
Anarchist. Before that he was an atheist, which 
followed a period of religious mysticism. At one 
time he was a conventional capitalist in prin- 
ciple, with the English government as his model. 
He is easily moved by an idea or an emotion, but 
he easily passes to another. He will soon forget 
this girl's death, to which he should have been 
superior. He has no steadfastness, and is not 
one of us." 

At this point, Levitzky entered the cafe. With 
him was the new arrival, the German Anarchist. 
To him Levitzky was talking with great anima- 
tion. His words rolled over one another with 
enthusiasm. 

" Do you know," he said eagerly, his face 
beaming, to Blanofsky and his companions, "that 
our distinguished friend here has consented to 
debate to-morrow night with our Socialist friend, 
Jacob Matz, that mistaken but able man, on the 
nature of individual right as interpreted by the 
Anarchist on one side and the Socialist on the 
other. I have written a poem on liberty which I 
intend to read at the meeting. Do you wish to 
hear it?" 

311 



He drew a manuscript from his pocket and 
read enthusiastically a poem in which a turbulent 
love for man and nature, for social equality and 
foaming cataracts was expressed in rich imagery. 
His face glowed and he seemed transported. 
He had forgotten Sabina. 




Charles Dana Gibson says: 
trip to Paris." 



It is like a 



THE REAL LATIN 
Q^UARTER OF PARIS 

By F. Berkeley Smith 

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Water-Coloy Frontispiece by F. Hopkinson Smith. About 100 
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FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, 
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LOVE AND THE 
SOUL HUNTERS 

By John Oliver Hobbes 

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A ROMANCE OF A STRANGE COUNTRT 

THE 
INSANE ROOT 

By Mrs. Campbell Praed 

Author of '■^Nadine ; The Scourge Stick "; "j4s a Watch 
in the Night, ^^ etc. 

THIS story has the same motif 2^% Stevenson's Dr. Jekyl 
and Mr. Hyde, and a weird treatment resembling that 
of Bulwer's " Strange Story." It will compare favor- 
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productions. Isadas Pacha, Ambassador at the Court of St. 
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mandrake root has marvelous powers, Marillier succeeds in 
assuming the body of Ruel who has been accidentally killed. 
On this change of identities the fascinating story turns. After 
marrying Rachel the problem of consummating the marriage 
can not be solved by Marillier, the wraith of the real Ruel 
preventing. A bolt of lightning solves the problem. There 
is a mystery about Rachel, who turns out to be the Emperor's 
own daughter. The scenery is partly that of the Algerian 
mountains, very graphically and beautifully described. The 
supernatural elements are handled in a way to make them seem 
actually credible. The storm climax reminds the reader of 
Hawthorne's best work in the Marble Fawn. 



l2mo. Cloth. j8o Pages. $1.^0 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, PubHshers 

NEW YORK & LONDON 



THE 
NEEDLE'S EYE 

By Florence Morse Kingsley 

Author of ^'■T/ie Transfiguration of Miss Philura,'' "Titus,'" 
"Prisoners oj the Sea,'' "Stephen," etc. 

THE NEEDLE'S EYE " is a remarkable story of modern 
American lite, — not of one phase, but of many phases, 
widely different and in startling contrast. The scenes 
alternate between country and city. The pure, free air of the 
hills, and the foul, stifling atmosphere of the slums ; the sweet 
breath of the clover fields, and the stench of crowded Tene- 
ments are equally familiar to the hero in this novel. The other 
characters are found in vine-covered cottages, in humble farm- 
houses, in city palaces, and in the poorest tenements of the 
slums. Immanuel, the hero, begins life as a foundling, and the 
chapters telling of his unhappy infancy and happy boyhood are 
written with a tenderness, a pathos, and an intimacy of knowl- 
edge and description that touch the deepest sympathies of tlie 
reader. Later, Immanuel finds himself the heir of a vast for- 
tune. His struggle to use the wealth in relieving the miseries 
of the slums demonstrates the truth of the declaration of Jesus : 
" It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye tiinn for 
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." 

Many of the situations in the novel are exceedingly dramatic. 
Others sparkle with genuine humor. This is a story to make 
people laugh, and cry, and think. 



Illustrations by F. E. Mears. i2mo. Cloth. $l.^O 



FUNK A WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
NEW YORK & LONDON 



<S/. Louis Globe-Democrat : *«It is a simple, gen- 
tle, quietly-humorous narrative, with several love 
affairs in it." 

UNDER MY 

OWN ROOF 

By Adelaide L. Rouse 

Author of " The Deane Girls,^' " fVestoi'er House," etc. 

A STORY of a " nesting impulse " and what came of it. 
A newspaper woman determines to build a home for 
herself in a Jersey suburb. The story of its planning is 
delightfully told, simply and w-ith a lite'-ary-humorous flavor 
that w'ill appeal to lovers of books and of the fireside. 

Before the house-building details are allowed to tire the 
reader, a love story is begun, and catches the interest. It 
concerns the home-builder, an old flame, and an old friend, the 
third of whom has become a next-door neighbor. With this 
romance are entwined a number of heart affairs as well as warm 
friendships. 

The style is bright, and the humor genial and pervasive. 
The "literary W'orker " and the "suburbanite" particularly 
will enjoy the book. Women of culture everywhere should 
appreciate its delicate style. 



Illustrations by Harrie A. Stoner. izmo, Cloth. 
Price, ^i.20, net; postage, 13 cents. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, 
New York & London 



JESUS THE JEW 

JND OTHER ADDRESSES 

By Harris Weinstock 
Introduction by Prof. David Starr Jordan 

Ten straightforward talks by a broad-minded stu- 
dent of the Jewish Race, explaining alike to Jew and 
Christian the fundamental and highest conceptions 
of liberal Judaism and its relationship in Christianity. 

HIGH PRAISE FROM THE NON-JEJVISH PRESS 
Herald and Presbyter^ St. Louis, Mo.: "The author is a 
man of force and of large liberality, and goes far beyond what 
the ordinary orthodox Jew would be willing to concede." 

The Outlook, New York : "It will justify a wide attention 
from both Jews and Christians, and in many respects will be of 
peculiar helpfulness to some who have no conscious religious 
faith." 

Neivs-Letter, San Francisco : "A very interesting volume, 
well written, broad in its tendencies, and one that will be help- 
ful to any one who reads it, regardless of race or creed." 

COMMENDED BT LEADING JEWISH PAPERS 
The yeiuhh Spectator, New Orleans : "Its tendency is to 
remove prejudices from the minds of non-Jews and to strengthen 
the faith of the Jew. Every Israelite in the land should obtain 
two copies, read one for his own benefit and comfort, and give 
the other to a Christian friend who entertains yet a few prej- 
udices and is desirous of divesting himself of them." 

yeivish Ledger, New Orleans, La.: "It deserves a con- 
spicuous place in the homes of intelligent people. . . . Always 
couched in respectful and courteous language, and refreshing in 
logical consideration of the question." 



/2mo, Cloth, 22g pp. $l.oo, net; by Mail, $/.oj 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
NEW YORK & LONDON 



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